Wow. In the week before the new iPhones come out (9/9 to 9/15), the iPhone 5 still dominates, taking the #1 and #2 positions (Softbank and Au 16 GB versions), as well as the 7th and 10th spots (32 GB versions).

This is significant because usually sales drop off dramatically in the weeks before a new model is released. In the past, that has been the only time when other models get to surpass the iPhone in sales.

I will be very interested to see the numbers for the next few weeks, in part because of the tracking web site’s method of fragmenting iPhone sales by model, carrier, and capacity, something it does for no other phone, and clearly an attempt to make it appear that other phones are doing better against Apple’s handset.

This fragmenting has already produced eight different iPhone listings (for all three capacities of iPhone 5 plus the iPhone 4S, and two carriers).

However, from now, DoCoMo joined as a third carrier, and there are two new models concurrently released, with five different capacities, and the iPhone 4S. That’s eighteen permutations.

It is entirely possible that, for a few weeks at least, the tracker’s attempt to break up and diminish the appearance of iPhone sales in Japan will actually result in the iPhone inhabiting all ten of the top ten spots, and probably most of the #11 to #20 spots as well. Should be interesting to see!