10 Million Sharp Mobile TV Handsets Sold

Sharp, the Japanese electronics manufacturer, has recently announced that it sold more than 10 million mobile phones that feature One-Seg capabilities (meaning that they allow users to watch TV programs on them). Although Sharp commercializes some of its handsets outside Japan too, none of those have mobile TV capabilities, hence the 10 million mark was surpassed only with the handsets sold on the local market.

The first One-Seg phone made by Sharp was released in 2006, so the company has sold 10 millions of such devices in only two years. But this should not come as a surprise, as Japan is known for being the country where mobile TV is highly popular, therefore users mainly buy One-Seg phones.

A typical handset with One-Seg (or 1Seg) capabilities has a wide display with a resolution of at least 480 x 640 pixels and a high image clarity, relying on the same technology that Sharp uses for its AQUOS LCD TVs. Sharp makes such handsets for all the four major Japanese carriers: NTT DoCoMo, KDDI au, Softbank and Willcom. Some of the mobile TV phones from Sharp's line-up are: AQUOS SH905i, SH705iII, Willcom 03 and SH906i.

The Japanese mobile market is a very competitive one, and selling 10 million handsets is not quite an easy thing to do. Among the local manufactures, other big names besides Sharp are Toshiba, Panasonic, NEC, Fujitsu, Hitachi and Sanyo, all of which are highly developed companies. Moreover, let's not forget Sony Ericsson, which is half Japanese after all, as well as the attempts of Nokia, Apple and other manufacturers to popularize their phones in Japan.

Currently, Japan has about 103 million mobile users, at a population of 127.5 million. This means that there are yet another 24.5 million people that will most probably become mobile users someday too, hence there's place for growth in handset production for all the manufacturers that activate on the Japanese market.