世論 What Japan Thinks

MyVoice recently published the results of its 6th annual mobile phone service provider image survey. Note that I have previously translated the 5th annual survey.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 5th of February they interviewed 13,352 people from their onlione monitor community: 54% of the respondents were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 41% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

The results here are pretty much in line with what even just the casual observer would conclude about the Japanese mobile phone market, although I would have thought that perhaps as Hollywood stars Brad and Cameron would have had a positive impact on SoftBank’s image, but their television commercials promote talking on the phone, ignoring the fact that most people email, and perhaps news of the rumoured three million dollars salary Cameron Diaz received for one six-hour shoot has soured the general public towards Masayoshi Son’s company.

Survey Results

Q1: Which service provider’s phone do you use? If multiple providers, answer for the one you use the most. (Sample size=13,352)

au (KDDI)	27.4%
NTT DoCoMo	44.0%
TU-KA (KDDI)	1%
SoftBank	19.3%
WILLCOM	2%
Astel	0.0%
DoCoMo PHS	0.0%
Don’t use any	5.7%

Since they first conducted the survey in February 2002, au has steadily grown from 12.1% to its current position. DoCoMo has also continued to grow, although more slowly, from 37.7% five years ago. However, this year saw a 0.5% shrink in its share. TU-KA never had much share to lose, from 6.0% in 2002, just like WILLCOM (ex DDI pocket), although that company is still actively looking for new business. SoftBank, or vodaphone, or J-Phone before that peaked in 2004 at 21.7%. Non-users has been steadily decreasing from 17.1% in 2002.

Q2: Which service provider’s television commercials leave the best impression with you? (Sample size=13,352)

au (KDDI)	59.0%
NTT DoCoMo	23.4%
TU-KA (KDDI)	0.0%
SoftBank	12.6%
WILLCOM	1.0%
Other	3.2%

au have really jumped up in the rating since last year, when they stood at 46.7%, stealing more of the eyeballs from DoCoMo, down quite considerably from 34.2%. Despite the high-profile (and high price!) advertisements from Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz, SoftBank continue to drop from their high-point of 38.9% in 2003 to the new low of 12.6%, down 3.3 percentage points since last year.

Q3: Which service provider do you think is the most techologically-advanced? (Sample size=13,352)

au (KDDI)	54.9%
NTT DoCoMo	20.2%
TU-KA (KDDI)	0.0%
SoftBank	17.2%
WILLCOM	4.6%
Other	2.7%

au are up again, this time by 7.6 percentage points from last year, again at the expense of DoCoMo, down 12.5 percentage points. SoftBank show an improvement here, up 2.9 percentage points, perhaps due mainly to Sharp’s Aquos mobile phone with the incredible hinge.

Q4: Which service provider do you think is the most reliable? (Sample size=13,352)

au (KDDI)	35.2%
NTT DoCoMo	54.6%
TU-KA (KDDI)	0.0%
SoftBank	4.0%
WILLCOM	2.0%
Other	4.5%

DoCoMo again lose out to au, with about 10 percentage points moving from DoCoMo to au. Following the free phone calls that were not really free all the time fiasco, SoftBank trustworthiness dropped by half from last year.

Q5: Have you taken advantage of number portability since it was introduced on the 24th of October last year? (Sample size=mobile phone users)

Yes, changed service providers (to SQ)	3.3%
No, not changed service providers	96.3%
No answer	0.4%

Q5SQ: To which mobile phone service provider did you change? (Sample size=number portability users)

au (KDDI)	67.6%
NTT DoCoMo	17.9%
SoftBank	10.8%
No answer	3.7%