世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com published the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into mobile information devices. On the last day of June and the first of July they interviewed by means of a private internet survey amongst their monitor group 330 people, 64.8% male. 10.0% were in their twenties, 30.6% in their thirties, 33.6% in their forties, 19.1% in their fifties, and 6.7% in their sixties. Note that this survey was looking at personal, not business, requirements.

I was suprisised that more people said that their ideal mobile environment would contain a spreadsheet editor rather than a scheduler, but perhaps this reflects the fact that many people already have sufficient mobile scheduling capability, be it either a pen and paper diary or a mobile phone’s function; most phones nowadays come with a rather functional scheduling application.

The column first notes that according to an earlier study they made of home PCs (no translation on this site), NEC was tops in terms of ownership, followed by Sony.

Q1: Which brand first comes to mind when thinking about “mobile notebooks”? (Sample size=330)

Sony	31.5%
Panasonic	23.9%
Fujitsu	8.5%
Sharp	7.3%
Toshiba	7.0%
Lenova	2.4%
DELL	2.1%
Other	2.1%
None in particular	15.2%

The others (named by 7 people) included IBM, NEC and surprisingly (to me anyway) Apple.

Q2: Within the next year, which of the following mobile devices do you plan to purchase? (Sample size=330, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Mobile notebook computer	63	19.1%
Internet-enabled portable games machine	26	7.9%
Mobile phone-sized Smartphone	18	5.5%
PDA	15	4.5%
Smartphone with full keyboard	10	3.0%
None of the above or no plans to buy anything	222	67.3%

Of course, whether people will be buying a DS or PSP for the internet capability or just using it as an excuse for the purchase is anyone’s guess!

Q3: What features would you want to be realised a mobile environment? (Sample size=330, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Mail sending and receiving	271	82.1%
Web browsing	218	66.1%
Word processing	153	46.4%
Spreadsheet editing	131	39.7%
Schedule management	120	36.4%
PDF viewing	93	28.2%
Word processor file viewing	91	27.6%
PowerPoint editing	88	26.7%
Spreadsheet viewing	84	25.5%
PowerPoint viewing	65	19.7%
Text editing	64	19.4%
Text file viewing	56	17.0%
Blog updating	48	14.5%
Web site updating	38	11.5%
Skype calling	35	10.6%
Online gaming	29	8.8%
Other	7	2.1%
Nothing in particular	32	9.7%

Note that here Skype was mentioned by name rather than just generic VoIP, but as we have seen before, Skype is just not well known in Japan.