Sales of all mobile devices including smartphones, tablets and PCs in Japan are expected to reach around 50.3 million units in 2015, representing an overall year-on-year decline of 2.3% according to IDC.
The research company said that although it is possible that the smartphone market will improve to regain positive growth, it is anticipated that growth in the tablet market will rapidly slow down, while the PC market is expected to contract by more than 10%.
Of the 50.3 million units forecast for this year, smartphones are expected to account for around about 27 million; tablets will account for 8.3 million uni ts, PCs for 13 million units and other devices 2 million units.
In 2014, meanwhile, the entire Japan mobile market is expected to have declined by 8.6% year-on-year to 51.4 million devices (25.7 million smartphones, 8.2 million tablets, 15.4 million PCs, and 2.1 million other data communication devices such as data cards).
IDC also reported that the number of mobile devices shipped in the third quarter of last year dropped by 19.9% year-on-year to 10.4 million.
The company said the main factors behind this contraction were user restraints in purchasing a new device just before the release of the iPhone 6 and a significant reduction in the number of devices shipped due to weak sales of Android OS-powered smartphones. In the PC market, the number of devices shipped also declined significantly following the exceptional demand associated with the termination of support for Windows XP.
