Back in June, we reported on how Sony smartphone sales were exceeding that of Apple in Japan, thanks to the company having their phones on DoCoMo, the country’s largest carrier with more than 60 million subscribers in a country of 127 million people. Apple, on the other hand, does not enjoy carrier support at this time from DoCoMo. In addition to Sony’s smartphone line being available on DoCoMo, the telecom operator as of recent has started a new initiative where the company only promotes two phones. Think if AT&T or Verizon only offered subsidies on only two devices. With Sony Xperia phones being half of the promotion, it’s easy to see why they’ve been enjoying a surge in sales.

New reports now indicate that the Sony Xperia A, known as the Xperia ZR in other countries, is outselling the Samsung Galaxy S4 by a margin of 2:1. Now before you point out that Sony is enjoying the promotion from DoCoMo, we should point out that the other phone offered in the promotion is the Samsung Galaxy S4.

According to Bloomberg Japan who spoke with Sony’s Senior Executive Vice President, Kazuto Tsubouchi, the Xperia A (pictured right) will reach 2 million units sold by the end of September. This is even more impressive when you take into account that the Xperia A only became available for sale in mid-May and through August 4th has managed to sell 1.24 million units. With both phones enjoying the same promotion from the same carrier, it’s a bit surprising to see Sony outselling Samsung 2:1 but it seems that the Japanese consumer is voting with their wallets and are overwhelmingly choosing Sony.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 has also enjoyed its fair share of problems with quality control, cheap quality, and lack of differentiation compared to the Galaxy S3.

Discuss:

Do you think Sony could enjoy similar success in the US if they had proper carrier support?