In the report titled Japanese Smartphone Market: Emerging Opportunities, ROA Group (www.researchonasia.com) has analyzed the smartphone market in Japan. The report provides a definition of smartphone, examines current trends and strategies among the Japanese operators, and analyzes the main operating systems (OS) with a focus on version characteristics and development trends. In addition, the report presents opportunities and barriers to the future growth of the Japanese smartphone market.

The report examines smartphones in a narrow sense, referring to a device that is equipped with Symbian UIQ, Nokia S60/S80, Windows Mobile, Palm, Linux OS and BlackBerry. The Japanese smartphone market size is estimated to have grown to about 600,000 in 2006 from about 100,000 in 2005 thanks to the expansion of the business market and increase in models. According to ROA Group, the market size is expected to grow every year by 78.6% (on the average) to reach 6 million units by 2010, occupying 13% of the total mobile handset market.