“BCN tracks smartphones on a weekly and monthly basis, and in its latest weekly rankings the iPhone 6 took 8 of the top 10 spots with the iPhone 5s taking 5th and 8th place,” Chuck Jones reports for Forbes. “The iPhone 6 Plus’ highest ranking was 11th and it has a fairly strong showing taking 5 of the next 7 spots.”
“BCN’s latest survey results also show that through Sunday, September 21, Softbank accounted for 42.9% of iPhone sales in Japan, KDDI or au was 32.2% and NTT DoCoMo was 24.9%,” Jones reports. “The split of iPhone 6 vs. 6 Plus of 82.2% and 17.8% or a 4.6 to 1 ratio is similar to what Fiksu has found in the US and Europe.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The current ratio of iPhone 6 to iPhone 6 Plus sales could be more of a supply issue than a demand issue. iPhone Plus supply continues to be severely constrained compared to iPhone 6. When supplies are more adequate (it’ll take months), we’ll be able to get a better gauge of iPhone 6 vs. iPhone 6 Plus popularity.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
How about revisiting some of the claims that said Apple would not do well in Japan because of this that or the other thing.
Japan is fascinating. It seems like overnight it went from one of the MOST entrenched Windows-friendly countries to Mac… overnight.
It’s not surprisingly to see rapid changes, because, well… Japan. BUt it’s still fascinating. 血祭り
@bluemeansgo…. Did you eat your blue vegetables?
Oh the one from this tool that almost destroyed someones reputation and lively hood?
http://www.wired.com/2009/02/why-the-iphone/
I’m surprised BRIAN X. CHEN is still in active employment. His reputation is currently second only to that of Bernard Madoff in terms of trustworthiness.
The iPhone destroyed the entrenched Galapagos feature-phones or gara-kei despite the things it didn’t support like NFC and FeliCa and mobile TV. Most likely the loss of Symbian support sealed those feature-phones fate. Talk about fragmentation due to carrier feature tiers and the user interfaces were inconsistent and abominable. For Apple and the iPhone it was like taking candy from a baby. I think the only people who thought the iPhone didn’t stand a chance in Japan were American analysts.
I don’t understand American analysts, why are they Apple iHaters, while everyone else in the world is Apple iLovers?. Anyone knows the answer?.
Investment analyst simply apply mathematical formulas to various data of a company and pronounce a judgement. Simple, quick and sufficient for most of their clients. From day one, analyst figured that Apple Computer Inc. was a toy company; case closed. They steered their clients into holding Microsof stock and never reviewed the competition with an open mind.
Over the past few years, most investment analyst finally came around to review Apple’s results and stock performance and sudenly realized that they had misguided their clients by discouraging them to invest into this “toy maker”. The problem was that investor who kept their investment in Microsoft missed the investment opportunity of the century. In fact they could have multiplied their capital by 18 over the past 10 years by investing in Apple; by staying invested in Microsoft during those last 10 years, as most investment analysts recommended, they did not even double their capital!
This is an extremely embarasing situation for the investment analyst, and to avoid the being labelled as incompetent by their client, they resoerted to invent the doom philosophy regarding Apple. The company would fail in any new field they entered into, the company was not up to par compared to it’s competitor, and lately, it could not survive the death of its founder, the company is much too big, etc. This is the kind of thinking that led to the defaced image they wanted to project to justify their inexplicable failure to properly assess Apple.
Under the Tim Cook management, we have seen this attitude change with a majority of analyst. There are still people who can’t face the fact that they have been so wrong for so long, and a lot of those are the source of the systematic disparagement that shows up in various medias. By and large, the man-made storm is mostly over and we will see more and more serious analysis of Apple. This will be beneficial to all investors in Apple.
It doesn’t surprise me at ALL that the smaller screen is popular in Japan. In fact, I’d suspect that in Japan, the smaller screens are even more popular than in the US.
Bonsai ! 🙂
Can someone kindky explain what these spots and numbers mean.. It very confusing for me
Articke uses rank and number of spots? Spots of what ?
How does one phone take 8 spots?.
How does 5s endup ahead of 6+ in ranking ?
What is meant by 6+ taking 5 of the next 7 spots?
I understand rank .. But what is spots?
There are 9 models of iPhone 6, and 9 of the 6 Plus (storage sizes and colours). So a single model, iPhone 6, can take 8 of the top 10 spots.
5s can be ahead of the 6 Plus due to supply constraints.
6 Plus started at 11th rank, then of the seven ranks from there to 18th place, it took 5 spots. For example only (no idea what middle 3 ranks actually were), 11, 12, 13, 16, 18.
Thank you!
Perfectly clear now
Cheers
I like the battery life of the iPhone 6 plus
BCN has a special system of dealing with iPhone sales being so commanding. Back when the first iPhones were released, BCN broke up the iPhone’s rankings by storage capacity, essentially making the iPhone into three different “products”–something done for no other smartphone in the listings. This was clearly done to dilute the iPhone’s rankings and make it more possible for other brands to appear in the #1 spot more often.
By the time the 4S came out, a new carrier (Au) began selling it as well, and BCN further fractured the iPhone, giving a separate listing for not only each model and capacity, but by carrier as well–again, no other phone is treated such. Thus, the iPhone was split into eight separate “products,” and the system began to backfire as the iPhone dominated almost ALL of the top spots in the rankings list–all 8 in the top 10, and 7 of them taking spots 1-7. My blog report at the time, which includes a “Japan hates the iPhone” quote:
http://blogd.com/wp/index.php/archives/9151
So now, we have the 6 and the 6+ in three capacities from three carriers for a total of 18 different units (any other phone would be counted as just 2), AND the same 3×3 treatment for the iPhone 5s and apparently a more limited 2×3 treatment for the 5c, which are still apparently being offered, and are on the list. So what are essentially four models are split into 33 different listings, massively diluting the iPhone’s ability to score well on the list.
The result? The iPhone has dominated the top spots anyway. Even in the weeks before the iPhone 6’s release, the 5s still held onto high rankings on the list, taking 5 of the top 10 spots for August, including #3 and #4. Were they not diluted, the iPhone 5s and 5c would probably have taken the #1 and #2 spots.
And now? The iPhone 6, 6+, and 5s occupy all top 18 listings. You have to go to 19th place to phone a phone that is not an iPhone. And it will probably stay that way for months, if past listings are any guide.
Which is not surprising. I ride the train to work every day, and as a fun experiment, I count the phones that are in view at any one time (usually 30-50% of people have them out). In the past few years, those head counts consistently show AT LEAST 50% of all visible phones being iPhones, often times more.
So, apparently the lack of a strap holder for goofy doo-dads did not keep the iPhone from succeeding in Japan.
And Japan’s pre-iPhone impenetrable smartphone market made unbreakable because of so many powerful, advanced models? A sham–half of the features touted didn’t work well, and almost all had confusing and labyrinthine interfaces that made the phones almost unusable. It did not surprise me at all when the iPhone broke through that wall of shiny crap.
In other words, you can’t disguise the approaching asteroid forever.
The long comments are better than the article.