Observing Japan's mobile consumer electronics market in the second quarter of 2014, Digitimes Research found several key factors such as mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras (MILC) are seeing better shipments than DSLR cameras; Japan-based DSC vendors' total shipments for fiscal 2014 (April 2014-March 2015) are estimated to fall 22.7% on year; Windows-based tablets accounted for almost 20% of Japan's total tablet sales; and NTT DoCoMo is pushing a wearable sport bracelet.
As the global DSC market continues to shrink, demand for DSLR cameras has also been affected; however, MILC models have become a new star of the DSC market with worldwide shipments reaching 266,000 units in April 2014, up 3.9% on year, performing a lot better than DSLR camera's 29.6% on-year drop.
MILC shipments in Japan suffered an on-year decline of 29.6% in April because of the country's consumption tax raise, but the drop was offset by the combined growth of 16.2% in other regions.
Japan's DSC vendors have estimated their combined shipments for fiscal 2014 to drop. Canon and Nikon are expected to see slight drops, but Sony and Fujifilm will see serious declines. The trend is also expected to boost Canon and Nikon's combined share of global DSC shipments to 66.6% in fiscal 2014, up from 60.3% in fiscal 2013.
After successfully achieving a sales share above 10% in December 2013, Windows-based tablets have seen stable sales in Japan's retail channel, and accounted for almost 20% of total tablet sales in the first quarter of 2014.
Windows-based tablets are raising demand for 8-inch and above tablets in Japan and taking market share from Android and iOS models, especially iOS-based ones. The trend shows that Apple's influence in Japan's tablet industry is not as strong as in the smartphone industry.
Japan-based telecom carrier NTT DoCoMo announced the Move Band 2 on June 4, while its competitors Softbank and KDDI also launched similar products recently. These wearable devices are capable of connecting to smartphones through apps and support several cloud services.
Since wearable device prices are not very high, paid cloud services are likely to become the focus of the telecom carriers, Digitimes Research analyzed.
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