For example, the recently announced new line-up of 22 phones from NTT DoCoMo includes five from Panasonic, four each from Fujitsu, Sharp and NEC and then two from Taiwan's HTC and a single handset each from Nokia, LG and Blackberry.

Coupled with a highly developed yet proprietary mobile Internet system, the Japanese market is sometimes referred to as the "Galapagos Islands" of the cellular industry -- a reference to the Pacific islands where a vast number of species have developed differently from most of the rest of the world.