Japan has always been one of Apple's strongest markets for the iPhone. In 2010 Apple actually registered 72% of the Japanese market. Even with tons of competition piling into the market since that time like Vivo, Huawei, Xiaomi and others, Apple still holds the majority market share in Japan. A Q4 2018 chart from Canalys shown below shows that Apple held 56% market share in Japan.

A new report out of South Korea today reveals that local companies Samsung and LG are seeking to break Apple’s grip on the Japanese smartphone market with new form factors.

The report notes that "LG Electronics will launch the G8X ThinQ (Korean model name: V50S ThinQ) through SoftBank in Japan this December, the company said on Oct. 22. The dual-screen phone is an LTE version of the V50S ThinQ.

As its previous model V50 ThinQ and the dual-screen smartphone sold nearly 600,000 units in Korea, LG Electronics is hoping that its new dual-screen smartphone will attract Japanese consumers.

Samsung Electronics will also launch the Galaxy Fold on Oct. 25 in Japan. The global smartphone giant attaches the Galaxy logo instead of the Samsung logo to the back of the foldable phone to boost its brand image among Japanese consumers."

In reality, Samsung likely removed their logo because it offends Japanese consumers at present while the trade war between Japan and South Korea is at it's peak.

The report further noted that "In Japan, Samsung and LG compete with the iPhone, which accounts for more than half of the Japanese market. According to Strategy Analytics, a market research firm, Apple ranked first in the Japanese smartphone market with a 50.8 percent share in the second quarter of this year. Samsung came in second, but its share was only 9.8 percent. Apple's new iPhone 11 series is enjoying popularity in Japan as their previous models did."

While it's the job of the Business Korea publication to pump up their local brands, their hope for LG and Samsung to take out Apple is at this point in time is nothing but a dream.

The Galaxy Fold's price alone is a killer and even with the Galaxy Fold display fixes, no consumer wants to buy a product wherein the unboxing experience is negatively ruined with a series of warnings about how to take care of the fragile display. The Galaxy Fold won't put a dent into Apple's iPhone sales to be sure.

Samsung's A-Series could be a bit of a threat, but likely not in 2019 while the political situation between Korea and Japan is affecting business overall. Korean consumers are boycotting Japanese products and it's likely being mirrored in Japan.

Until the political situation between these two countries is resolved, LG and Samsung aren't likely to be removing Apple from being the number one Smartphone OEM in Japan any time soon.

Issues aside, Apple's new iPhone 11 line-up is very strong this year and the camera on the iPhone 11 Pro is the best on the market today. Simply put, the Japanese consumer always wants the best and the iPhone 11 is going to be the winner in Japan with the Galaxy fold not even showing up in any statistics.

Earlier today we posted a report about Selena Gomez choosing the iPhone 11 Pro to film her new promotional video.