Japanese awareness of iPhone low, but curiousity high

By Ken Y-N ( February 28, 2007 at 21:05) · Filed under Internet, Mobile, Polls

Would you want to buy an iPhone? graph of japanese opinion japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted on the 21st of February by JR Tokai Express Research into Apple’s new iPhone mobile phone.

Demographics

330 people from their monitor group employed in public and private enterprises completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 79.4% were male, 17.3% in their twenties, 45.8% in their thirties, 29.4% in their forties, 6.7% in their fifties, and 0.9% in their sixties.

Note that most of the features in the iPhone are already available in other phones, and even the Maps feature mentioned in Q2 is surpassed by existing applications like NaviTime (US version). There is also the question of how the touch-screen would work with Japanese input - would they just emulate the existing keypad entry, or have they a novel idea for that?

Survey results

Q1: Do you know about the “iPhone”? (Sample size=330)

Know it well 9.1%

Know a bit about it 27.3%

Don’t really know much about it 26.7%

Don’t know about it at all 37.0%

After the various features of the phone such as email, voice calls, web viewing, music, video, three-way calling, visual voicemail, SMS, photos and maps were explained, all of the sample were asked if they wanted to use them. The one most people wanted to use was the Maps feature, so this result is presented below.

Q2: Do you want to use the “Maps” feature in the iPhone? (Sample size=330)

Want to use 72.7%

Don’t want to use 9.1%

Don’t know 18.2%

Regarding the other features, the second most popular one was Music, with 49.1% wanting to try it, then Photos with 46.4%.

Q3: If the iPhone was on sale in Japan, would you want to buy it? (Sample size=330)

Want to buy 31.2%

Don’t want to buy 17.3%

Don’t know 51.5%

Unfortunately, it is not reported how many of the 31.2% potential customers were those who indicated they knew of the iPhone in Q1.