My Switch is in Japanese just for fun, but my phone… Nah, I tried for a moment, but that was too scary 
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Nah, Apple dominates Japan with a 50% share. From my experience their products come pre-packed with all kinds of goodies in Japanese, and is much easier to setup for JP than Android. Everything is supported from the get-go, and Macbooks even have an amazing dictionary with pitch accents preinstalled. iPhones also have easy dictionary ‘lookup’ in Japanese. Apple seems to put a lot of effort in their JP experience.
Although very very slightly 
I was referring in regards to China from the anecdote. Anyways, 50% isn’t really “dominating” as it’s a 50/50 split
Ah, guess I misunderstood.
Well, only if you combine all the other phone companies and all Android under one collective lump. I’d still say iPhone is dominating. And how about non-smartphones still prevalent in Japan
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Mine says お疲れ様でした but usuly gets cut off before the phrase is done 
And what about Windows Phones? 
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Completely agree about the dictionaries: I have a Mac and an iPhone, so I use them regularly, especially the ones on the Mac (just because the pitch accents are only visible on Mac). They make looking words up online almost unnecessary. I’m not sure whether or not Apple did all this to woo the Japanese market though, since there are similar dictionaries for German, Spanish and French (among other languages), even if it’s true that Apple usually pays quite a bit of attention to user experience. However, well, I didn’t get my devices in Japan, and I’m not planning to put their interfaces into Japanese any time soon, so I can’t be sure I know what sorts of ‘goodies’ you’ve heard about or seen.
I guess you are including Japan in the “western countries” category?
I just checked and iPhone isn’t as crazy dominant as it was when I was last looking for a phone (6 years ago), but it’s still 50/50 with Android.
Hm, I’m not sure I agree. 共有 is the term you use for sharing, e.g. files. I can see that extending to the data encoding a location (even though I just never thought about it). 転送 though is more like forwarding (like an email). It feels stranger to me that 共有 but maybe it’s because I’m used to those usages.
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But as far as software development for Android goes, it doesn’t really matter if it is 1 manufacturor or 8000. Doesn’t make much of a difference othe than to the manufacturer’s profits.
I don’t know if it’s because I live in Japan, and therefore have a Japanese phone, but when I change my phone language to Japanese even my Chrome and Safari apps end up swapping to Japanese. This ends up making searching for anything on my phone just about impossible. Even if you input an English search term/phrase, the Japanese interface ends up producing different results than the Japanese, and a lot of the bigger sites end up defaulting to Japanese as well.
Typically when I’m using my phone I like to get it done quickly and put it away, so the internet language being Japanese as well was a deal breaker for me.
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It might be different with your phone, but I would think you could change that? My phone is in Japanese, and though I don’t have a Japanese phone, it does automatically change all the things to Japanese. But the ones I wanted to change back, I could. (For me it was the speech to text that was most important, but I also have a couple of apps I changed to English.)
I’ll have to play around with it later and see if I can’t manage to get it to work that way. I wasn’t having any issues until I went to google something real quick and was struggling to even get relevant results, so if I can work around that I’d probably leave it in Japanese. Thanks for the tip!
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転送 does mean ‘to forward’, whereas 共有 does mean ‘to share’ in the sense of ‘to possess jointly’. However, when you say ‘I’ll share my location with you’, you really mean that you’ll pass it on to someone else, and not that both parties will ‘have’ that location. That’s my logic. After the location data has been passed on/forwarded (‘shared’ in English), it’ll be in the possession of both users (also ‘shared’, but a different nuance). It’s the same thing for file sharing: the overall phenomenon and result should definitely be called ファイル共有, because that’s the objective – for two or more users to have access to the same files. However, when the link to the file is ‘shared’, it’s really being ‘passed on’ or ‘sent’. 共有 expresses a (final) state of joint ownership, whereas words like 転送 (which probably wasn’t the only or best choice here) express the process that leads up to that state. We just use ‘share’ for both phases in English as a shortcut, partly because expressions like ‘share out’ allow us to transform ‘share‘ into an action verb expressing giving, allowing it to go beyond being a stative ‘common possession’ verb.
Ultimately, however, I’m saying all this based on my understanding of 共有 as it would be used in Mandarin and based on the definitions for 共有 in 大辞林. I don’t know if everyday Japanese usage has started to adopt this other meaning of ‘share’, but the kanji literally say ‘common-have’ and thus contain nothing that suggests the act of giving or passing on for the purpose of sharing.
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When a site like Youtube is using 共有 for “share a video” I think we can set aside any idea that maybe it’s inaccurate. I think they have the resources and Japanese staff to make sure their main interface labels are accurate.
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I disagree with that point. At least, that’s the image I have; now we both have the same information. In any case, the point is moot since
Edit: also, when choosing the way to share a location, one option is リンクを送信する, which is a much more natural way to say send in that context than 転送 (which again would mean you are passing something along rather than originating the transmission).
Also, then both of us have that link which points exactly to that location. So it’s shared. That’s how it feels to me anyway.
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@Naphthalene @Leebo I’ll grant that this means the term is well understood by native speakers, but that doesn’t mean the translation is accurate. France was using “distanciation sociale” for ‘social distancing’ in official communications for a very long time, until some people started protesting and pointing out that “distanciation sociale” used to refer a refusal to associate with others, especially between different classes in society. These same people said that “distance physique” or “distance sanitaire” (‘physical distance’ or ‘health distance’) were more idiomatic in French. Nonetheless, you’d think that the French government would have enough native speakers and resources to ensure the accuracy of their French. Something isn’t necessarily correct just because the a large number of native speakers use it. Bad translations can and do stick. Thus, I’m willing to accept that this usage of 共有 is a part of common usage, but I see no justification in the kanji for it that doesn’t require an extension of logic or reliance on the translation of 共有する (‘to share’).
EDIT:
Frankly, I chose 転送 because it was the only thing that came to mind. I’m a Mandarin speaker, and 送信 doesn’t exist in Mandarin beyond the literal ‘send a letter’ and the less literal ‘send word’. I rationalised 転送 as workable since you could say you’re passing on information received from the service use (e.g. Google Maps). The other reason I thought it could work is this definition of 転送 from 大辞林:
② 情報を移動させること。データを一方の装置から他の装置へ移動させること。
However, yes, I was hoping that someone would propose a more natural alternative, which is why I said I felt my suggestion was a ‘possible…alternative’, and not the only one. Thank you.
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The term for “Screen-sharing” (in Skype for example) is also 画面共有, even though the screen is not literally co-owned (one person can just look at another person screen). Maybe it’s a modern use of 共有 that is not clearly in dictionary yet.
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You can go even further. On Zoom, you will have the option to share the sound coming from your computer as well, which is translated as コンピューターの音声を共有.
Maybe? But at the same time, no one seem to find it strange around me… Maybe we are just all used to it.
Edit: just checking my dictionary
１ 一つの物を二人以上が共同で持つこと。「秘密を共有する」
I mean, surely we can share the view of the screen the same way we would share a secret? It feels similar at least.
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You can change your default language for google, google chrome and I many apps you have on your phone. I also have Japanese as my phone language but for important apps (that I’d have trouble navigating or search engines) I switched the language setting back to my native language.
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You inspired me to do the same. I was a bit afraid of that before but my WK knowledge seems to be so good that I can read most of the Kanji without a problem or at least piece together what it should mean. But I feel like I learned a lot in the last 30 hour where I navigated around to see what I could read. So thank you 
Now I only need to get better at reading katakana…
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