Foreign mobile phones interest less than one in fifty Japanese
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japan.internet.com published the results of goo Research’s 27th regular monthly survey into mobile phone upgrade needs. Over four days towards the end of August 1,000 mobile phone owners from their monitor group successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 55.3% of the group was female, 2.3% in their teens, 20.7% in their twenties, 42.0% in their thirties, 23.3% in their forties, and 11.7% aged fifty or more. I believe people were asked about their own personal phone rather than company equipment.
The almost zero interest in foreign phones (if we discount Sony-Ericsson) is both quite surprising and rather predictable to me. The design aesthetic of Western phones is quite different to the Japanese; fat stubby bricks versus thin rounded clamshells, to attempt to sum up the differences in a single phrase. Samsung is Korean, however, as might Pantech be (I’ve never heard of them before!), but I wonder if their non-existent sales is related more to poor model appeal rather than to nationalistic sympathies. Japanese phones do really poorly overseas (discounting Sony-Ericsson again) so perhaps the reasons are similar for both imports and exports?
Q1: What provider do you most use? (Sample size=1,000)
NTT DoCoMo 53.3% au (KDDI) 26.7% Vodafone (Softbank) 16.0% WillCom 4.0% These percentages have barely changed from last month’s survey.
Q2: Please tell me the maker of the mobile phone(s) you currently use. (Sample size=1,000, multiple answer)
Sharp 18.1% Panasonic 17.3% NEC 17.0% Toshiba 11.4% Sanyo 8.1% Sony Ericsson 7.2% Mitsubushi 6.2% Casio 5.5% Kyocera 5.5% Fujitsu 5.1% Hitachi 1.7% Japan Radio Co (Nihon Musen) 0.4% Nokia 0.3% Motorola 0.1% Samsung 0.0% Pantech 0.0% Other 0.5% Don’t know 1.6% Note that there are 1,060 votes here, so perhaps most of the people who own more than one phone choose the same brand? Again, these ownership rates are barely changed from last month.
Also note that Sharp produces mobile phones for all four main providers; Panasonic
supports DoCoMo almost exclusively, although…ahh, that’s company confidential information!Q3: Please tell me the mobile phone maker you are currently most interested in. (Sample size=1,000)
Sharp 20.5% Sony Ericsson 10.3% Panasonic 8.5% NEC 8.3% Toshiba 3.1% Casio 3.0% Mitsubushi 2.7% Kyocera 1.9% Fujitsu 1.3% Nokia 1.2% Sanyo 1.0% Hitachi 0.4% Motorola 0.4% Japan Radio Co (Nihon Musen) 0.2% Samsung 0.1% Pantech 0.0% Other 0.1% None in particular 37.0% The only brands that have interest levels higher than their usage levels are Sharp, currently carrying out a massive advertising campaign to promote their Softbank/Vodafone AQUOS model, Sony-Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Samsung, although the last three still barely register on the buying public’s radar.
Q4: When selecting a mobile phone carrier, how important is it that they have a Smartphone in their model lineup? (Sample size=1,000)
Very important 4.1% A little important 14.2% Not important 23.6% Don’t really know 23.4% Don’t know what a Smartphone is 34.7%
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