IDC Japan has released its figures on the Japan mobile market for 2012, and it will likely come as no surprise that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) held the largest share of the smartphone market at 33.1%. Readers may recall that it was just a year ago that Apple topped the smartphone market for the first time in the country. But what I find interesting here is the less imposing figure for the mobile market overall, where Apple now leads with 23.3%. If we compare this with IDC figures from 2011 (see below), it shows just how much progress the Cupertino company has made in Japan, leapfrogging Sharp and Fujitsu [1] for its first year on top of the entire mobile market. Anyone remember that old Wired article from a few years back? Yeah, that doesn’t age so well. [IDC Japan] In IDC’s 2011 report it was ‘Fujitsu/Toshiba’, as it was prior to Fujitsu acquiring Toshiba’s stake in Fujitsu Mobile, which occurred in April 2012.  ↩