Our Handset Country Share Tracker (HCST) service predicts that Apple would be highly likely to post a record-breaking market share in Japan smartphone market in Q4 2016, largely boosted by the robust sales of new flagship devices, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, widening the gap against local Japanese brands including Sony, Fujitsu and Sharp.

The record-high smartphone market share by Apple in Japan was set in Q2 2016, based on this report, in which we track a lot of smartphone vendors on a quarterly basis in 15 major countries including Japan, and we estimate the upcoming iPhone 7 and 7 Plus to boost the sales in the market where iPhone 6S and iPhone SE are the top two best-selling smartphones as of Q2 2016.

The two new features implemented on iPhone 7 line-ups, (1) water-resistance and (2) Apple Pay based on Felica standard, though a bit late, would help with a record-high market share in Japan in the last quarter of this year.