TOKYO-The top two Japanese mobile handset manufacturers-NEC and Matsushita Communications Industrial-have lost market share, while Sharp, which is the leading maker for picture phone handsets, has expanded its market share, according to a survey compiled by Multimedia Research Institute.
According to the marketing firm, the market share of NEC during the first half of fiscal year (FY) 2002 from April to September dropped by 10.6 percent to 18.8 percent, and Matsushita Communications’ share also dropped by 7 percent to 18.6 percent. On the other hand, the market share of Sharp expanded by 6.9 percent to 14.7 percent. Sharp is the leading manufacturer for picture-phone handsets. Sharp has provided terminals for J-Phone’s Sha-mail service, which created the current picture phone boom in Japan.
Shipment of picture phones during the first half of FY 2002 reached 6.79 million, which is 33.7 percent of the total shipment (20.15 million units) during the period. In the second half of FY 2002, 20.5 million units of handsets are expected to be shipped in Japan.
In related news, the number of users of picture phones exceeded 10 million in Japan, according to statistics released by mobile carriers.
The number of mobile-phone users has been saturated in Japan during the past couple of years. The number of subscribers as of the end of September was 72 million, a 0.6-percent increase from August. On the other hand, picture-phone users, including J-Phone’s Sha-mail, have been rapidly increasing.
According to J-Phone, the number of subscribers of J-Phone’s Sha-mail exceeded 7 million as of 23 October. NTT DoCoMo, which launched picture-phone service last June has already won 2.2 million subscribers. KDDI, which launched its picture service in April, has won 1.33 million subscribers.
