Animoca, a company engaged in the development and publication of mobile games, published data on the most popular Android smartphones in Japan and talked about why Samsung Note is not popular in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Today, Japan, along with the United States and South Korea, is the central region for developers who have bet on Google Play. This market brings the largest revenue to the official Android app store.
How much does it differ from the American one? The Hong Kong company Animoca is sure that it is essential. If Samsung is preferred in the USA (5 out of 10 top Android devices are made by the Korean giant), then in Japan they like “native” devices from Sony, Panasonic, NEC and Fujitsu. However, the top of the top – the first and third positions – are still for Samsung, namely for the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S2. But their separation from other devices is insignificant.
Samsung Note, which is very popular in many countries (even in India, where most of the top gadgets belong to the budget segment), is not even in the top twenty in Japan.
Why?
In many countries of the world, people are used to typing messages and playing by turning their smartphone horizontally, Animoca experts explain. In Japan, in turn, a game that runs in portrait mode is more likely to be successful. Considering this, as well as the fact that it is difficult to use the Samsung Note even in an upright position with one hand, the fiasco of the tablet phone in Japan is quite understandable.
The device from Disney also enjoys great success in this market. The “big-eared” Disney mobile F-08D, distributed in pink and white, occupies the 12th position in the top.
As for the most popular versions of the Android platform, Jelly Bean is missing from the top five. In the first place with a huge margin of 39% Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.4, then with 13.2% Gingerbread 2.3.5, and then again Ice Cream Sandwich, only for version 4.0.3 with 9.3%.
Animoca collected data from its own players located in Japan and downloading apps from Google Play (February-March 2013).
Photo: House of Japan