Wow, this quite remarkable. I would have imagined that the iPhone would not do very well in Japan, where they seem favour domestic electronics manufacturers. I wonder how Japanese iPhone sales compares to those in Korea.

Reality trumps "experts" most of the time - these experts were all in agreement that because the iPhone didn't offer X Y and Z, it was "DOOMED" to fail.

Guess not. ;)

No e-wallet, 1Seg or physical keypad. It was claimed that no honest to goodness Nihonjin would carry a handset without at least two those capabilities. I've constantly heard on the tech forums that the iPhone is crap and lacking in features compared to any Japanese or Korean handset, so again I'm puzzled about this announcement.

I honestly think this survey is not telling the whole story simply because there are not that many iPhones being sold in Japan compared to its population and so a lot of people must be just holding onto old cellphones. They say retail stores only, so maybe the Japanese are buying cellphones online or something.

What is amazing is that the common cellphone is dropping out of favor both here and overseas. Apple is sitting on a goldmine and Nokia is sitting on a landmine. RIM seems to be in the best position of all companies with multiple models of only smartphones and having multiple carriers and willing to build anything they're asked to without any conditions.

Aquos SH-04A feature set. Unreal.
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/product/foma/pro/sh04a/index.html

Any Engadget reader would die for this sort of handset because it has EVERYTHING. I mean, every piece of hardware you could possibly put in a handset and uta-hodai (unlimited music).
So, I'm really blown away that the iPhone could possibly trump it. It makes no sense at all.

Other than 1Seg and the wallet thing, what exactly is missing from the iPhone? A lot of those features mentioned could be added via apps from the apps store while other features like the widgets are already present in the base install.

My in-laws are currently in Tokyo and just visited a major Apple retailer and said the Apple section was packed! Apple is rocking Japan - it has always been one of Apple's strongest markets outside the U.S. for Macs, and the iPhone is following...

Geeks LOVE features - but regular people, regular Japanese, could give a rats patootie about features - they want a FUN & EASY phone that they can figure out in seconds, not minutes....

Interesting spec but also comparable to iPhone. 5 MB camera is pretty outstanding. The bottom line is how user friendly is their OS comparing to iPhone OS. Is the graphic looks cheesy comparing to iPhone? I mean the website uses 8-bit icon to represent their features. That's not really convincing over how good the phone's OS going to be. iPhone is not only just about features, but the user end experience (the OS itself) is what knocks everyone's socks off.

Gee. Smartphone sale rises and I wonder why? Is it Blackberry, Palm, or iPhone influence? Is not that hard to figure out, isn't it? Especially now a $99 iPhone vs. my $180 LG phone from Verizon that has 200x less features than iPhone does.

oops, forgot to add Docomo in the list.