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DOCOMO Subscribers Loss and Misreading the iPhone Sales in Japan

Here are how the three main Japanese carriers fared during the month of September:

NTT DOCOMO lost 66,800 subscribers, au/KDDI gained 232,700 and SoftBank 270,700.

DOCOMO loses market share again, SoftBank is the top carrier in terms of subscribers gain for 21 months in a row1 and au/KDDI continues the nice streak started a year ago, fending off SoftBank’s attempt to becoming #2.

Let’s stress the fact that DOCOMO is still by far and large the biggest carrier in the country: it has 22 million more subscribers than its closest competitor.

Right after the release of those numbers last week, dozens of articles—often parroting each other—went on about how the iPhone was a failure at DOCOMO. I refrained from writing immediately, waiting for the noise to dwindle down. Because it’s more complicated than that.

What’s in a full month

First and foremost, the numbers do cover the entire month of September. You know, a full month, like 30 days. The iPhone 5s/5c were released on September 20. Like a third of that full month.

To make it clear: the iPhone launch cannot be entirely responsible for the fate of any Japanese carrier this September .

This is barely the fault of analysts getting too excited, as DOCOMO itself has blamed limited iPhone stocks for the drop in its subscriber base.

A simple look at the numbers tells you that this is not the case. DOCOMO had 27.5% share of iPhone 5s market in its first week of sales—the last week of the month that we’re interested in. au/KDDI had 30%2.

So, with similar sales share, au/KDDI won more than 200k customers thanks to the iPhone launch and DOCOMO lost more than 50k because of the same exact launch? And stocks would have been much more limited on DOCOMO than its competitors?

Let’s be serious.

In a nutshell, why the subscriber loss? The iPhone 5 and DOCOMO itself .

The iPhone 5

If you look at the sales numbers for the launch week-end and the week immediately following it, it’s not difficult to witness that one of the factors in the iPhone domination is the very strong sale of the previous model, the iPhone 5.

This isn’t new and has been clear at every iPhone launch: there’s always a massive uplift by the sale of the previous iPhone model in Japan .

au/KDDI and SoftBank are heavily discounting the iPhone 5, making it basically “free”. It was not only expected by customers, but also advertised before the release of the new model. This is a weapon that DOCOMO doesn’t have: no discounted iPhone 5, no fall-back stock and offers.

DOCOMO lost more than 130,000 customers who used the mobile number portability scheme3, which tends to support that they got lured by very attractive offers for that smartphone4

This is why I had suggested that DOCOMO could have been better at marketing the 5c pushing it more heavily than its counterparts. Truth to be told, it could have meant a cutthroat price war—the three operators react to each other’s pricing like symphonies—that would have not created any real winners in the end (beside the customer), though I’m not certain that SoftBank or au/KDDI would have wanted a situation where there was basically no differentiation between the 5 and the 5c.

The other important factor, an unknown one, is the terms signed with Apple. There might be some limitations in the freedom the carriers can have, restricting the ability to actually even think about a full-blown price war.

DOCOMO’s other problem

It remains that reading the loss of subscribers only with the iPhone in mind is both biased and naive. I’ve said it repeatedly, here and elsewhere, one cannot read what the iPhone will do to DOCOMO at this stage. You have frontloaded sales for early adopters, likely to already have switched to au/KDDI and especially SoftBank in the past years and just trading their phone (with contract). You have price-sensitive customers appealed by the heavily previous model that DOCOMO doesn’t carry. You have limited stock for everyone on the flagship models.

DOCOMO’s problems have started way before this. The carrier somewhat suffers from an image problem and from a complex price structure problem. iPhone or no iPhone, it has repeatedly shown an inability to counter the two challengers, and this for more than 5 years now5.

If you look at the market share of the the carrier in 2006 and compared it with the graphic at the top of this post, you’ll immediately understand:

The loss of subscribers during the month of September has been heavy. Almost a record, yes. But, again, let’s not pretend this is new, the carrier has had a bad year, losing customers in four of the last twelve months.

It’s DOCOMO’s strategy that it is at fault here. While it keeps innovating in infrastructure technologies, it still behaves like it were in a world where it’s the market-definer, the untouchable leader that sets the standards for the others6. It’s a mindset conundrum.

Accepting the iPhone on its network was the first step7 and early signs in October show that DOCOMO is faring very good, taking the top spots in mobile phone sales in Japan with the 5s, confirming what I thought: the iPhone was needed.

It’s the first time we have a standardized device on all three carriers in Japan. SoftBank and au/KDDI cannot differentiate between “we have it and you don’t” anymore. The iPhone 5c will take off8 in a second cycle of—more conservative—customers. The 5s is a flagship phone that flies off the shelves.

If DOCOMO ends up not making any in-roads with a device that is so adored in Japan, it will have only itself to blame.

 

 

 

  1. 41 months out of 43! ↩

  2. The 5c breakdown was similar—while only counting for a fifth of the sales. ↩

  3. the customer gets to keep its number, carriers often offer special deals for those ↩

  4. The differential, or about 65,000, are new customers. It’s impossible to know how many of those got on-board for the iPhone 5s/c, the full month of October will show us a better overall picture of the dynamic between the three carriers ↩

  5. and contrary to some reports, DOCOMO has seen a worse loss of subscribers: in December 2006 ↩

  6. the “benevolent dictator” theory, that brought such innovation as NFC or mobile internet earlier in Japan than anywhere else ↩

  7. though I’m sure it also got a better deal by signing now that Apple needs growth rather than 5 years ago. ↩

  8. I don’t read too much in the recent reports of supply chain production cuts by Apple ↩

DOCOMO Offers Evernote Premium

IT Media:

On October 1, Evernote and NTT DOCOMO launched a campaign offering a one year premium subscription to the cloud service

This is not a new deal per se (it actually dates back to 2010, the same year the company opened its Tokyo bureau), as the two companies have had a similar agreement for smartphones and tablets1. The DOCOMO x Evernote deal is now expanded to the iPhone .

Evernote is extremely successful in Japan. I have been lucky to visit their offices several times and the numbers of books written about them in Japan is just staggering2.

The newly-introduced Evernote Market heavily features Japan, just look at the video (and for those who know her, let’s see how many times you can spot Mika, the marketing director of Evernote Japan).

  1. it is believed that DOCOMO carries the iPad, but no official news is expected before the middle of the month ↩

  2. more than 40 when I last visited ↩

Japan iPhone 5s/c Sales, A Week In

Following up on the massive win for the iPhone during the launch weekend, let’s look at how the iPhone behaved now that we have a full week of sales.

Weekly phone sales ranking

Here are BCN‘s rankings, from Sept 23 to 29:

  1. iPhone 5 16GB (au/KDDI) — was #3 (+2)
  2. iPhone 5s 64GB (SoftBank) — was #2 (0)
  3. iPhone 5s 32GB (au/KDDI) — was #4 (+1)
  4. iPhone 5 16GB (SoftBank) — was #5 (+1)
  5. iPhone 5s 32GB (SoftBank) — was #1 (-4)
  6. iPhone 5s 64GB (au/KDDI) — was #9 (+3)
  7. iPhone 5s 64GB (DOCOMO) — was #6 (-1)
  8. iPhone 5s 32GB (DOCOMO) — was #7 (-1)
  9. Samsung Galaxy S4 — was #10 (+1)
  10. iPhone 5s 16GB (SoftBank) — was #8 (-2)
  11. Kyocera Gratina — was #11 (0)
  12. Sony Xperia A — was #12 (0)
  13. iPhone 5c 16GB (SoftBank) — was #15 (+2)
  14. Panasonic P-01 E — was #18 (+4)
  15. iPhone 5c 16GB (au/KDDI) — was #19 (+4)
  16. iPhone 5 32GB (SoftBank) — was #16 (0)
  17. iPhone 5c 32GB (DOCOMO) — was #17 (0)
  18. iPhone 5c 32GB (SoftBank) — was #25 (+7)
  19. iPhone 5 32GB (au/KDDI) — was #20 (+1)
  20. Sharp Aquos Phone Serie SHL22 — was #24 (+4)

Down the list, the iPhone 5c 32GB by au/KDDI is up 4 places to #24. The iPhone 5s 16GB by DOCOMO is down 13 spots to #26, the exact same fall for the same phone on au/KDDI at #26. The last appearance is made by the iPhone 5c 16GB on DOCOMO at #33 down three spots.

Still, another massive week for the iPhone 5s in Japan .

Remember that those ranking are derived from tracking points of sales—covering 40% of the OTC electronic stores—, notably not including Apple Stores, nor carrier shops. It has thus to be read as an indicator only, one that has proven solid historically1.

5s v. 5c

The situation remains almost unchanged from the launch weekend if we look at how the two models stacks against each other. The 5S still outsells the 5c by a wide margin . Unsurprising at this stage.

iPhone 5 v. 5c

Why does the iPhone 5 rank so high? au/KDDI and SoftBank are massively subsidizing the 16GB model rendering it “free”2. In other words, they’re dumping the stock. Back when the 5 was released, there was a very similar behavior with the 4s.

It’s almost ironic that au/KDDI would push this offer so strongly, since they’re so adamant on marketing their 800MHz LTE band …a band that the iPhone 5 lacks3.

Note that the networks are offering great discounts on the 5c, they just seem to first be wanting to clear the 5 first. DOCOMO seems on a holding pattern of wait and see, whereas they should probably use the angle of marketing a “free” 5c 16GB versus the old 5 its competition pushes.

Limited 5s supplies

Limited 5s supplies are being reported in shops around the country. This is the main reason behind the big drops in the rankings compared to last weekend, although one cannot yet read the short-term success of the new models (in other words: how frontloaded they were in the first three days).

This is also where the methodology of BCN—for all solid that it is as mentioned above—finds its limitation, as Apple Stores and flagship carrier shops are getting priority for replenishment.

DOCOMO’s share

I have the feeling that DOCOMO is not making the best job out of the iPhone . Comparing with last week, the carrier actually lost iPhone market share to its competitors throughout the week. It swapped its second place with au/KDDI4.

The lag in getting the carrier email to work on the device (not mentioning it’s not through a push method) but also the perceived lack of traditional DOCOMO offerings of back-ups, battery support and other services (through the Premier Club for instance) might partially explain this. But, again, I sense its marketing being at fault, probably because of a last-minute deal with Apple leaving no time to truly build any strategy.

SoftBank, clearly, continues to dominate the iPhone market . It’s way too early to seriously analyze the reasons. But it should win the subscribers gains batttle when the numbers are released later this month.

Breakdown by capacity

BCN broke down the sales by capacity, offering some additional insights.

As expected with an early adopter crowd, the more expensive models are the most popular.

If you look at the same numbers by carrier, you can see that SoftBank and DOCOMO share a similar pattern, the latter having more emphasis on the high-end model and the former a more even distribution overall. The 32GB version looks very successful at au/KDDI.

I wouldn’t read too much into this, as it could just be borne out of inventory issues. It’s only in the mid-term that we will be able to learn if carriers strategies are really into play.

The iPhone 5c is almost at 50/50 between the two available storage capacity: 49.1% for the 32GB and 50.9% for the 16GB.
The notable outlier is DOCOMO: the aggressive pricing of the 32GB compared with the two other networks could explain this differentiation.

In the end, the first full week of iPhone sales in Japan has cemented SoftBank as the market leader for that device, with DOCOMO and au/KDDI battling for second place.

At this time, it’s impossible to know how many of the overall sales came from existing carrier subscribers (DOCOMO and SoftBank being the most competitive), carrier switchers with number portability (au/KDDI and SoftBank being cheaper) or simply new contracts (DOCOMO seemingly offering a better deal).

It appears that DOCOMO is either not doing the best job in communicating its good prices, or suffering from an image problem, at least with early adopters. The second wave of subscribers, until next March, will give some clarity this murky question.

  1. another research company, GfK, reports rankings that are almost similar to those ones ↩

  2. for new contracts ↩

  3. that iPhone 5 version is only compatible with the 2100MHz band 1 LTE that au/KDDI offers, the 5s/5c also access the building-penetrating 800MHz band 18; note that if you’d want to also use the 1500MHz band 11 LTE, you should think about a Xperia UL for instance ↩

  4. note that the numbers are very similar even if you break them down by 5c v. 5s ↩

Sony Releases Virtual Money App and Reader

Sony.co.jp:

A simple design allowed to achieve a size roughly equal to a card

This small Sony device will allow to connect prepaid electronic cards to the iPhone or iPad. A free app will give you access to the balance and history and, apparently, charging the card will also be possible through the app.

The phone uses Bluetooth to connect to the card-reader which, in turn, uses RFID to talk to the card.

The PaSoRi—that’s the name—will read Suica (Japan Rail East’ contact-less card that most tourist will remember because of the lovely penguin) and Rakuten’s Edy card. It’s on the online retail giant that you’ll be able to buy it, starting “soon”.

Twitter Lifeline Gets Expanded

Gaby Pena, on the Twitter blog:

Today, we’re launching Twitter Alerts, a new feature that brings us one step closer to helping users get important and accurate information from credible organizations during emergencies, natural disasters or moments when other communications services aren’t accessible.

This feature was actually launched a year ago in Japan, an initiative inspired by the massive use of Twitter during the catastrophe on March 11, 2011. The service saw a surge of people trying to get information, as LINE did.

Carrier also have a dedicated alert system in place, through a setting that your phone won’t have if you’ve not bought your phone in Japan.

DOCOMO and Visa Partner for Mobile Virtual Card

DOCOMO:

The docomo Kouza Visa Prepaid users will receive a 16-digit card number linked to their account on docomo Kouza, the company’s electronic money service, to shop at most online stores where Visa is accepted, and the purchases will be immediately debited from their account.

This virtual payment service could prove quite potent. The service being prepaid, there is no screening delay. No more debit cards, only a smartphone .

Japan Surpasses US in iPhone Game Spending

Newzoo:

For the first time since the launch of the iPhone back in 2007, the US are no longer the top grossing country for iPhone’s most popular content: games. Japan, that has a history of spending billions on mobile games before the arrival of smartphones and tablets, is taking to the app stores of Google and Apple big time.

The iPhone game revenues will exceed USD 1bn this year in Japan . Unsurprising, but still impressive. Moreover, the research firms affirms that Google Play is even bigger than iOS in Japan  when it comes to revenue, a situation similar than South Korea. In Europe and in the US, iOS still leads the market with that metric.

Juniper Research has recently estimated that 160bn apps will be downloaded in 2017, gaming being one of the fastest growing segment. The question for Japan is then: should you keep manufacturing independent portable devices?

iPhone Purchasing Intent in Japan

Goo Research:

The purchase intention for an iPhone on DOCOMO is 10%

So, across all demographics surveyed, 10% of Japanese intend to buy the iPhone on DOCOMO . By itself, that doesn’t mean much. One could read “only” 10%, another “a solid” 10%.

What I find the most interesting in that survey is elsewhere: 20.3% of current smartphone owners—read Android—would like to switch to the iPhone on DOCOMO.

21% of the carrier’s own subscribers are willing to go iPhone, darn close from surveys over the years that have shown that around a quarter of the carrier’s subscribers wanted the iPhone. And, no less than 28.3% of DOCOMO Android owners want to switch to the iPhone .

Moreover, and as the research suggests, the iPhone could also be very potent for first time smartphone buyers on the network. The intent for this segment hovers around 19% now, but subscribers transitioning from a feature phone could see the iPhone as reassuring , thanks to the incredible reputation of the phone in Japan.

Another interesting titbit: 5.4% of au/KDDI users would like to switch to DOCOMO, 8.2% from SoftBank—but 11.8% of the carrier’s iPhone users.

Finally, why switch? 54.5% were just waiting for DOCOMO to get the iPhone .

I believe there’s a reason that DOCOMO’s executives repeatedly mentioned the threshold of 30% of  iPhone on their network—already a pretty big number.. They know it’s a very attractive handset for many of traditional customers—30% of those surveyed say they got interested in the iPhone because they want to transition away from a non-smartphone.

Some rumors have pointed at a DOCOMO actually expecting the iPhone to weigh up to 40% of its smartphone sales. And if we believe the study, nearly 60% of those wanting to switch will do so before next April.

The iPhone will really be big on DOCOMO.

 

Japanese Mobile Manga Publisher Goes Social

Yukari Mitsuhashi on StartupDating:

a unique feature that lets users share their favorite page from a selected comic to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook

Not only can mobile users get the latest popular comic—a very successful type of publishing in Japan—faster than anyone else, but they can now share bite-size content on social networks.

Mobile publishing experiments have been doing quite well in Japan. Piracy rates are lower than in other industrialized countries and users are used to pay for content via mobile.

I keep saying that the mobile landscape has changed a lot since—foreign—smartphones have appeared in the country. But, undoubtedly, the behavior of mobile users in Japan gives the content industry a potential head start.

Breaking Down the iPhone 5s/c Launch Sales in Japan

Thanks to BCN, a group that tracks consumer electronics sales from point of sales (with some exceptions), we have a better picture on how the iPhone fared in Japan this past launch weekend.

Weekly phone sales ranking

The weekly rankings are for the Sept 16 to 22 period, overshooting the launch period per se. As I had predicted1, the iPhone is dominating the charts.

There’s no differentiation for color, nor sales numbers. As expected however, the sales skewed massively towards the 5s2.

  1. iPhone 5s 32GB (SoftBank)
  2. iPhone 5s 64 GB (SoftBank)
  3. iPhone 5 16GB (au/KDDI)
  4. iPhone 5s 32GB (au/KDDI)
  5. iPhone 5 16GB (SoftBank)
  6. iPhone 5s 64GB (DOCOMO)
  7. iPhone 5s 32GB (DOCOMO)
  8. iPhone 5s 16GB (SoftBank)
  9. iPhone 5s 64GB (au/KDDI)
  10. Samsung Galaxy S4
  11. Kyocera Gratina KYY06
  12. Sony Xperia A
  13. iPhone 5s 16GB (DOCOMO)
  14. iPhone 5s 16GB (au/KDDI)
  15. iPhone 5c 16GB (SoftBank)
  16. iPhone 5 32GB (SoftBank)
  17. iPhone 5c 32GB (DOCOMO)
  18. Panasonic P-01 E
  19. iPhone 5c 16GB (au/KDDI)
  20. iPhone 5 32GB (au/KDDI)

Further down, the iPhone 5c ranks 25th for the 32GB on SoftBank, 28th for the same storage on au/KDDI and 30th on DOCOMO but for the 16GB version.

70% of iPhones

If you include the 5, the iPhone had a market share of 66.9% of all the sales last week. 77.1% if you narrow it down to the smartphone category.

The iPhone 5s 32GB by SoftBank took 7.5% of the market during the week, the 64GB model 7.4%. Impressive as they only appeared for part of the week covered.

The relatively strong performance of the iPhone 5 was certainly thanks to a last effort by the carriers to discount it and get rid of the stock.

Sales performance compared

BCN narrowed the findings down to the three days (September 20-22) and found that the 5s/5c sales were performing almost 1.5 better than the iPhone 5 during launch in 2012.

The iPhone 5 is the best-selling iPhone in Japan to date, it outsold the 4s by a ratio of roughly 1.6.

Below a visualization with this benchmark in mind.

It’s quite striking, isn’t it? Within the latest generation, 83.2% iPhone 5s were sold in Japan versus 16.8% of 5c , a number very close to the Localytics findings of a outselling ratio of 5 in favor of the iPhone 5s.

Carrier distribution

As you can remark on the rankings above, SoftBank seems to be well positioned in the race for the iPhone. I remarked on Sunday that it’s playing the card of being the carrier who knows the handset most3 in its marketing. It’s too early to say that this strategy worked, although one can think that it rings well to a certain audience.

A most probable explanation is that the launch weekend is frontloaded with early adopters: a good part of those presumably already are on SoftBank and either are transitioning their contract or simply won’t bother to switch (number portability exists in Japan, but they might not want to wait and get the iPhone right off the door). The fact that the 64 and 32GB versions are the most successful—on all three networks—also hints at an early adopter type of crowd.

SoftBank was responsible for 44.7% of the weekend iPhone 5s/c sales, au/KDDI for 27.5% and DOCOMO for 27.8%.


When you break it down between the two models, SoftBank gets an even higher share of the market for the 5s, 45.9%, seemingly proving that the early adopters did go where they are used to.

The 5c is more evenly distributed between the three.

The 5c will come into play at a later cycle, it will particularly be interesting to see how the carriers strategize the on-boarding of first time iPhone buyers towards the 5c (if they do it at all). I expect DOCOMO to play this card a bit more heavily than its counterparts.

It is however too early to read too much in those numbers, whether about the success of the 5c or the success of any carrier over another.

With the iPhone poised to lead the mobile phone sales in the forthcoming weeks, there will be a lot more to churn.

 

  1. it doesn’t require to be a genius to do so ↩

  2. as I mentioned on my last post, the 5c is not for the same audience and will rise later ↩

  3. it was the first to carry it in 2008, au/KDDI only started in 2011 and DOCOMO is the newcomer today ↩

Custom Docomo iPhone? A Safari Bookmark

Mona Nomura, on Twitter:

they don’t install — just bookmark on Safari.

Like we see here with Mona and Joseph talking about DOCOMO’s customer on-boarding, DOCOMO did not get any customization at all on the iPhone —what it kept saying was the reason for them not to get the iPhone.

I never believed in the rumors that the carrier would get a logo1. Along with Serkan Toto, I had conjectured that they would maybe attempt to install an app upon signing-up at the store, although it would have created a nightmare of creating iCloud accounts for every new customer (or use existing ones for those already signed up), politely insisting that the customer installs the app, etc.

In the end, DOCOMO only adds a bookmark on Safari in the iPhone .

On a related note, the carrier’s dedicated smartphone service, SP-mode, is far from functional with the iPhone. No phonebook backup, no payment gateway and users are reporting that the dedicated DOCOMO email is having issues, although it should be IMAP/POP compatible.

Here’s the aforementioned Twitter conversation between Mona Nomura and Joseph Tame:

  1. this rumor was strong in Japan for a while ↩

Brand Perception: Apple Tops Microsoft, Google in Japan

Nikkei-R:

Apple leads the corporate brand perception rankings for the first time!

This yearly Nikkei Research study estimates the brand power, as perceived by businesses. Apple got high marks for originality, the premium aspect of the brand, but, most and foremost, the willingness by businesses to recommend its products. Reaching the top spot in Japanese corporate brand perception validates how Apple deals with businesses .

The survey doesn’t only include tech brands, the second place went to a home delivery business for instance. Microsoft fell to third place. Google went from 8th to 5th place.

iPhone 5s and 5c Sales at Launch in Japan

The numbers are in. Apple sold a whopping 9 million iPhone worldwide this past weekend.

Apple® today announced it has sold a record-breaking nine million new iPhone® 5s and iPhone 5c models, just three days after the launch of the new iPhones on September 20.

As a comparison, it sold 5 million units on a similar timeframe when the iPhone 5 was released.

No country breakdown

Apple never breaks down sales numbers across countries, nor—and it is more important this time around—between models. There’s no way of knowing how many iPhone were sold in Japan alone. We will have a better overview of gains between carriers subscribers when the new contract numbers will be officially released early next month, but they will only show trends, as, again, no per-model segmentation. The iPhone will also clearly the most sold phone during this week in Japan—another estimate we’ll get next Friday—but, here again, no exact numbers will be given. ((note that the iPhone is not sold through the online Apple store, making delivery dates impossible to constantly guess))

There are still some inferences that we can make to put some light on the performance of the iPhone this past weekend. The easiest statement first: it’s pretty certain that the 9 million mark was made possible with the help of DOCOMO, the most important carrier in Japan.

5c versus 5s

It’s obvious that the iPhone 5s will outsell the 5c at this early stage: those who are lining up in front of Apple stores are like the moviegoers queuing for a new Star Wars movie . They want to be first to get the newest experience. The iPhone 5c is simply not a phone that was ever intended for early adopters . It will sell loads, but on a second or third wave: in Japan, probably the most around the Christmas period, if a continued pricing war ensues and lures new customers in, and around the end of the fiscal year (next March) when the Japanese carriers are giving it all to grab the most subscribers.

5s as the early king in Japan

Localytics, a mobile analytics and marketing platform, released some interesting numbers earlier today. And it confirms what I thought. Through a surveying of mobile and web apps1, it estimated that the iPhone 5s is outselling the 5c by a comfortable ratio.

localytics-iphone-global-market-share

What about over here? The iPhone 5s is outselling the 5c by a factor of 5 in Japan . This is higher than the worldwide ratio of 3.7 and the US, where it stands at 3.4.

I’m not really surprised by this higher ratio. The queues in Japan were always more impressive than anywhere else—the Japanese truly love the iPhone—and the definition of what is new itself has a strong appeal.

How many iPhone sold?

Yesterday, Nikkei ran an article that hinted at disappointing sales. It was mostly focused on how the pre-orders were faring. Since those only cover the 5c, I wouldn’t read too much into it.

Localytics metrics are what they are too: a representation of traffic for one provider, via some properties; they can’t tell the overall picture.2

I’m particularly startled at how China fares here. Last year, it sold 2 million during the first weekend. Granted, it was not during the iPhone 5 worldwide launch but later, thus relatively closer to the current release3. Still, the analytics could very well have a US bias (under-counting China to a large extent and maybe Japan somewhat too), allowing one to see the 5s/5c ratios as good estimates, but not the global distribution.

I’m thus only allowing myself to make a guess: 1.15 million iPhone 5s/5c sold in Japan during the launch weekend .

I could be proven wrong—I’m probably a bit optimistic—but, in any case, not bad.

  1. full methodology, as per the website: Localytics is the leading analytics and marketing platform for mobile and web apps across more than 1 billion devices, 20,000 apps and 5,000 customers. Localytics processes 50 billion data points monthly. For this study, we examined over 20 million unique iPhones and investigated the breakdowns by United States carriers and by global activations. The timeframe for this study is all active iPhones from when the iPhone 5s and 5c were first released on September 20th, 2013 until 8 pm EST, Sunday September 22nd, 2013. ↩

  2. the company notably massively over-counted the Windows Phone market share in August 2012. ↩

  3. a smaller cycle could have some impact on the sales ↩

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