Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Quickly Dominate Japanese Smartphone Sales [iOS Blog]

Apple's new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets are dominating the Japanese market in their first week of sales, reports Forbes , which cited weekly sales rankings provided by Japan's BCN. iPhone sales were boosted by carrier Softbank, which edged out KDDI and NTT DoCoMo as the top wireless provider and accounted for 42.9 percent of weekly iPhone sales. According to the tracking, individual iPhone models took the top 18 spots in sales for the week.

The iPhone 6 was the most popular iPhone version, displacing competitors and the company's own the iPhone 5s and 5c handsets, which previously topped the list for the month of August. According to BCN, the relative split between iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models was roughly 82 percent to 18 percent, with the smaller iPhone 6 seeing much greater sales than the larger model.

BCN tracks smartphones on a weekly and monthly basis, and in its latest weekly rankings the iPhone 6 took 8 of the top 10 spots with the iPhone 5s taking 5th and 8th place. The iPhone 6 Plus’ highest ranking was 11th and it has a fairly strong showing taking 5 of the next 7 spots.

Apple’s success compares to the month of August where the iPhone 5s took the 3rd and 4th positions and the 5c captured the 6th, 7th and 10th positions.

A similar dominance of the iPhone 6 was observed in US metrics with the iPhone 6 far outpacing the bigger iPhone 6 Plus. Much of this disparity may be the result of supply constraints affecting the availability of iPhone 6 Plus handsets, making it much harder for customers to find the models in retail stores and online.

Apple began selling the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus on September 19 and sold a record-breaking ten million handsets in the first weekend of sales. Demand for the handset remains high with minimum ship times of seven to ten days for most iPhone 6 models and three to four weeks for iPhone 6 Plus versions.

Related roundup: iPhone 6