Over 120,000 surveys will be completed each year, with the first results expected in the fourth quarter of 2012. The service will go live in Japan later this month.

Nic Lewisohn, managing director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, said: “Historically the Japanese mobile phone market has been something of an anomaly with non-Japanese brands failing to gain any real traction. However, this picture is changing rapidly as one in three smartphones sold last year were iPhones. Japan is the world’s third-largest economy and has the tenth-highest population making it a hugely important market which global mobile phone players can no longer afford to ignore.”