A Closer Look at the iPhone’s Rise to the Top in Japan [CHART]

As you may have heard by now, Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone accounted for the largest share of mobile shipments in Japan for the fourth quarter of 2011, according to research firm IDC Japan. This result is, of course, most likely due to its October 14 release of the iPhone 4S. I was curious to see the figures from the previous quarters, so I had a look back at older IDC reports [1] to get a closer look at how the iPhone made it to the top of the Japan market.

IDC Japan lists the top five mobile vendors in its quarterly reports. What’s surprising here is that Apple actually dropped out of the top five in Q3. IDC didn’t specify exactly what Apple’s third quarter share is, but it would have been below fifth-place Kyocera, which accounted for 10 percent. As you can see in the chart below, Apple falls into the sixth category of ‘other’ in IDC Japan’s Q3 data:

It’s not unexpected that iPhone shipments would drop off as the release of a new model approaches. But the fact that the company could perform so well on the back of the iPhone 4S – from owning less than a tenth of the market to account for more than a quarter, at 26.6 percent…

…well, that’s a pretty successful phone.

[Image: rcrwireless]