wow guys check the OP.
This is some wicked spin, and it's hard to notice.
Here in America, we have a smart phone market.

There is no smart phone market in japan. Japanese phones that do all their crazy stuff are not called smart phones.
The "smart phone" market was invented by the people selling American smart phones in Japan, most likely Blackberries, Iphones, Droids etc.

The OP says they've only sold 2.3M iphones in a population of 127M people. Does that sound like 72% of the market? FYI Japanese consumers buy 30M cell phones a year.

Japanese phones have also carried digital tv since 2005 and email since 1999. Smart phone? What a joke.

It just proves that if company has a nice product that meets their needs that they are at least willing to ignore it.  Most companies just need to try harder to meet their needs.

no it doesn't. Read my post right above yours.

Yeah I didn't think those numbers added up either. I figured the Japanese have been using "smart phones" long before the market really took off here. I thought he meant that the Apple had 70% of the "smartphones" sold for that period, but figured that it was just because it's a new product and most people already have "smartphones" there. Guess my reasoning was wrong but right about the numbers not making sense. 

I read it. I also read that is sold only .7 less than a popular electronics device made by a native company. I think that does show that irrespective of a national purchasing bias they are willing to purchase foreign made products that suit their needs.

PSPhone Would = Iphone Dead In Japan..maybe lol
Though iphone would still Smack a PSPhone just about everywhere else.

Those are called feature phones. It's a blurry line, but the main distinction is that smartphones have a powerful, flexible, multi-tasking OS that is capable of running third party applications and is tied to huge data plans, while feature phones have a set of inflexible, pre-installed software which is generally pretty mediocre and they're tied to more restricted data plans. And then you've got dumbphones which perhaps have some PDA features but don't move data wirelessly.

Smartphones are pretty much destined to overtake feature phones in all markets. It's going to happen soon in NA, because our feature phone market is less developed while smartphones are coming on strong. Japan developed a huge feature phone market with some slick features, so it will take a while longer for smartphones to become dominant, but the iPhone is leading the charge.

I see, interesting distinction. From what I remember hearing, Sony was coming out with a new smartphone to rival the iphone (probably the psp2). I wonder if this is the reason...

they probably counting ipod touch, or the japanese smartphone market it's too small

or they are ignore ntt docomo phones which are smartphones, label em as dumbphones

but many are linux and symbian based.

WOW...but weren't Smartphones a new market in Japan...so it would seem like right time, right place.