Apple’s Other Bright Spot in Asia

That Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has been doing phenomenally well in China has been documented well, but its performance in another larger Asian country has not been shabby either. A report from research firm MM Research Institute, translated by Japanese blog Macotakara, says iPhone sales in Japan during the last fiscal year reached 7.25 million units.

Don’t Miss: Apple Works to Remedy This Public Relations Nightmare.

Apple, which breaks out Asia Pacific separately from Japan, had said during its second-quarter earnings report last month that sales in the country nearly doubled in the quarter to $2.6 billion. In the last three months, while Apple alone had 34.2 percent of Japan’s smartphone market, while all Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android phones combined for 61.4 percent.

“Smartphones surpassed feature phones as the most acquired device type in February 2012, signaling an important shift in Japan’s mobile market,” comScore’s Daizo Nishitani said. “The rise in smartphone adoption opens the door to tremendous opportunity for publishers and advertisers to expand their reach and increase engagement with key consumer segments through this channel. Japanese mobile phone users were already highly engaged with their devices, but with the added functionality and higher levels of mobile media consumption we should expect to see significant changes in behavior among the Japanese mobile population in 2012.”

In China, iPhone sales in the first three months of this year had risen fivefold from the corresponding 2011 period. Apple’s quarterly revenue from China was $7.9 billion, about 20 percent of total company revenue. This was triple Apple’s China sales in the same period a year ago.

Don’t Miss: Facebook Promises New App Store Won’t Bite Apple and Google.