According to new research from Japanese firm, Kantar, nearly seven out of every ten customers who recently defected from NTT’s DoCoMo mobile communications unit switched carriers because of the iPhone. Apple’s iPhone remains a strong driver of consumer choice in Japan’s wireless industry as 66% of survey respondents who recently left DoCoMo indicated that they moved to a new carrier specifically to get the popular smartphone. The study, which was uncovered by the folks over at The Next Web, was conducted via the Internet from February to July of this year and surveyed 10,000 men and women over the age of 16 each month.
DoCoMo, a unit of Japanese telecommunications giant NTT, is the largest wireless carrier in Japan with more than 61 million subscribers. Despite counting nearly half of the Japanese population as customers and showing year-over-year gains in total subscriber numbers, DoCoMo’s share of the overall Japanese mobile phone market is on a downward trajectory, The company ended up shedding nearly two percent of its share between 2012 and 2013, ceding ground to SoftBank and au’s KDDI, both carries that offer the iPhone. These troubling signs, combined with the recent survey results may help explain why DoCoMo recently promised Apple that 40% of the carrier’s sales would be of Apple’s handset.
Carriers seem to be a key channel in Japan’s mobile phone marketplace and not only for the subsidies they provide but phones are not usually sold unlocked in Japan and bring your own phone SIM only plans that are popular elsewhere are rare. These and other factors are why some believe that the deal with DoCoMo, as well as China Mobile, may drive up to 35 million additional iPhone sales in 2014. We’ll have to wait and see if the carrier can live up to its promise.
Source: Kantar via The Next Web
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