世論 What Japan Thinks

DIMSDRIVE Research recently published the results of their 84th Rankings survey. This time one of the questions was on what mobile phone features are really not needed at all. They questioned 5,950 people from their monitor group at the end of June by means of a closed internet questionnaire.

With most newer phones being loaded with more and more features, with a corresponding increase in development costs (you’d scarcely believe me if I told you how much one of the recent DoCoMo 90x series cost in person-months!), this is perhaps a timely survey that may give the phone companies pause for thought.

Note that SMS features on the list – almost every phone has a far more advanced mail client, so the SMS is just there for legacy support. Another strange answer is the wireless LAN; as far as I am aware, it is not a feature that is widely available apart from one or two specialised SmartPhones. Perhaps people were just lumping BlueTooth and infra-red support together under this category?

This poll also raises more questions than it answers. Why is BlueTooth right up there? Does it indicate consumer ignorance of what it does? Why do more men want rid of games rather than music playback?

Q: There are many varied features on mobile phones, but from the following list please select the functionality that you feel you don’t really need at all. (Sample size=5,950, multiple answer)

Rank	Feature	Votes
1	Group chat (Push-to-talk, Hello Messenger, etc)	2,962
2	BlueTooth	2,265
3	International roaming	2,031
4	Videophone	1,963
5	Games	1,853
6	Wireless LAN support	1,746
7	Electronic money (Osaifu keitai, etc)	1,732
8	Infra-red transmission	1,705
9	Television, including One-Seg	1,645
10	Radio	1,625

Q: There are many varied features on mobile phones, but from the following list please select the functionality that you feel you don’t really need at all. (Sample size=5,950, by sex, multiple answer)

Rank	Men N=3,036	Votes	Women N=2,914	Votes
1	Group chat (Push-to-talk, Hello Messenger, etc)	1,401	Group chat (Push-to-talk, Hello Messenger, etc)	1,561
2	BlueTooth	1,052	BlueTooth	1,213
3	Games	1,041	International roaming	1,020
4	International roaming	1,011	Videophone	972
5	Videophone	991	Electronic money (Osaifu keitai, etc)	887
6	Infra-red transmission	916	Wireless LAN support	884
7	Music playback	871	Television, including One-Seg	859
8	Wireless LAN support	862	Radio	884
9	Electronic money (Osaifu keitai, etc)	845	Games	812
10	Short Mail Service (SMS)	827	Infra-red transmission	789

Looking at the detailed age and sex breakdown, suprisingly to me teenage boys ranked music players and ring tones as the third and forth most useless feature, and games were in eighth place. Perhaps they already have DSes and iPods for their entertainment needs? These boys also voted e-mail as the ninth least needed; perhaps the true reason is that they are spending all their allowance on ring tones and email, so need the temptation removed!