世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com reported on a survey by JR Tokai Express Research on mobile phones and memory cards. The results presented in the story were in fact extracted from fuller research in JR Tokai Express Research’s 26th regular survey on mobile phone upgrading requirements. 330 people completed their private internet questionnaire; 69.7% of the sample was male, 10.6% in their twenties, 37.6% in their thirties, 33.3% in their forties, 13.0% in their fifties, and 5.5% in their sixties.

With phone cameras now up to 2 megapixels or more, and music download and playback features becoming commonplace, users of both these features may require somewhere to offload the data. I don’t know about the latest music phones, but many of the previous models with memory card slots came with a 16Mb card included. This should be used as a baseline when looking at Q2. Also, the current market price for a 128MB mini-SD card (the most-used format) is about 2,500 yen.

Q1: How many memory cards do you own? (Sample size=330)

One	61.8%
Two or three	21.7%
Four or five	2.0%
Six to nine	1.2%
Ten or more	0.0%
None (to Q3)	13.4%

Q2: Please select the capacity of the memory cards you use. (Sample size=254)

	Votes	Percentage
8MB	19	7.5%
16MB	60	23.6%
32MB	31	12.2%
64MB	20	7.9%
128MB	50	19.7%
256MB	33	13.0%
512MB	23	9.1%
1GB	13	5.1%
2GB	1	0.4%
Don’t know or can’t remember	22	8.7%
Other	0	0.0%

Q3: Do you think mobile phones need a memory card slot? (Sample size=330)

Really needed	26.7%
Needed to some extend	38.5%
Not really needed	12.1%
Not needed at all	5.8%
Can’t say or don’t know	17.0%