世論 What Japan Thinks

MyVoice recently reported on the results of a survey into the matter of mobile phones. It may be of interest to cross-reference with yesterday’s translation of a similarly-themed MyVoice survey into mobile phone service provider image.

Demographics

13,252 people from MyVoice’s internet community answered the questionnaire between the 1st and 5th of February. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

The two main problems I find with mobile phones are first, even if you stay with the same service provider and the same mobile phone maker, even just a minor model upgrade can mean that the internal software is completely rewritten, and one needs to relearn the quirks of the new email system or character input methods. Second, new models sometimes see not just a feature rewrite, but a degradation in usability. For example, my old phone allowed me to check what the particular ring tone setting were for each contact group in my phone book; now I cannot. I know from working with other projects that usability sadly seems to come pretty low down in the pecking order when designing software.

Survey Results

Q1: Which service provider’s phone do you use? If multiple providers, answer for the one you use the most. (Sample size=13,252)

au (KDDI)	26.7%
NTT DoCoMo	44.0%
SoftBank	19.6%
WILLCOM	2.6%
Other	1.1%
Don’t use any	6.0%

Q2: What maker’s mobile phone do you use? If multiple phones, answer for the one you use the most. (Sample size=mobile phone users)

Sharp	20.8%
Panasonic	14.0%
NEC	13.2%
Toshiba	11.5%
Sony Ericsson	7.8%
Sanyo	7.2%
Kyocera	5.4%
Mitsubishi	4.5%
Fujitsu	4.4%
Casio	4.4%
Hitachi	2.8%
Nokia	0.4%
Motorola	0.2%
Other	1.2%
Don’t know	2.2%
No answer	0.2%

Q3: How satisfied are you with your current phone? If multiple phones, answer for the one you use the most. (Sample size=mobile phone users)

Extremely satisfied (to SQ1)	10.4%
Somewhat satisfied (to SQ1)	64.6%
A little dissatisfied (to SQ2)	20.1%
Extremely dissatisfied (to SQ2)	4.5%
No answer	0.4%

Q3SQ1: What aspects are you satisfied with? (Sample size=satisfied users, up to three answers)

Phone design or colour	53.6%
Ease of use, ease of understanding	43.0%
Breadth of features	29.9%
Display crispness, size	24.1%
Feel of the phone	17.2%
Screen or character readability	16.7%
Size	15.5%
Thinness/thickness	14.1%
Camera performance	13.8%
Weight	12.1%
User interface design	11.1%
Robustness	9.3%
Other	5.5%
No answer	0.8%

Q3SQ2: What aspects are you dissatisfied with? (Sample size=dissatisfied users, multiple answers)

Breadth of features	34.6%
Ease of use, ease of understanding	30.7%
Camera performance	24.8%
Thinness/thickness	20.6%
Weight	20.5%
Phone design or colour	17.3%
Robustness	12.8%
Display crispness, size	12.5%
Size	11.7%
User interface design	8.7%
Feel of the phone	7.4%
Screen or character readability	7.4%
Other	26.3%
No answer	0.5%

Q4: Next time you upgrade, which maker’s phone do you want to buy? (Sample size=mobile phone users)

Sharp	16.3%
Panasonic	8.7%
NEC	8.6%
Sony Ericsson	5.9%
Toshiba	4.1%
Casio	2.4%
Kyocera	2.1%
Sanyo	1.4%
Fujitsu	1.3%
Mitsubishi	1.2%
Nokia	0.9%
Hitachi	0.7%
Motorola	0.6%
Other	0.4%
Don’t know	45.1%
No answer	0.4%

Q5: When buying a mobile phone, how aware are you of who the handset manufacturer is? (Sample size=13,252)

Extremely aware	19.8%
A little aware	43.7%
Not very aware	26.6%
Not aware at all	8.0%
No answer	1.9%