iPhone is No. 1 in Japan

The iPhone is currently the best-selling smartphone in Japan. According to the survey, sales of smartphones have grown 80% in the past year, with Apple clearly leading the market.

Apple has sold 1 million iPhones since July 2008 through Softbank, it is an exclusive Japanese carrier. Initial sales estimate that got Brian Chen in so much trouble last April.

According to nikkei.net, market research company BCN surveyed the market and said the iPhone 3G 8GB, sold by Softbank, easily came in at number one. Second in line was the 16GB iPhone, while the NTT CoCoMo Aquos SH-04A came in at number three.

The appeal is not only the iPhone’s ability to download music, games software and other applications, but also a plan Softbank devised to cut the price of handsets and slash the price of the communications tariff.

No. 3 in the BCN survey is the NTT DoCoMo Aquos SH-04A, designed by Sharp. Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Bold came in No. 6. Rounding out the top 10 list were four smartphones made by HTC. The survey was conducted before the launch of the iPhone 3GS, which arrived in Japan on June 26.

The iPhone is also benefiting from a relatively static local market, which has little incentive to develop new features. No word has emerged on the popularity of the iPhone 3GS; conventional cellphones are believed to be rapidly dropping out of the market.

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