Almost one third of Japanese phone users have GPS
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Recently, japan.internet.com reported on some research conducted by JR Tokai Express Research regard mobile phones with Global Positioning System (GPS) features. The research was conducted between the 20th and 22nd of March amongst their online monitor community.
Demographics
330 people successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.2% of the sample was male, 22.1% in their twenties, 43.0% in their thirties, 23.6% in their forties, 7.9% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.
Note that in the current model line-ups, all of the top-end DoCoMo’s (the 903i series) have GPS, as do most of the au models, and according to the SoftBank web site, the following models have GPS: Toshiba’s 911T, 910T, 904T, 813T, 812T, 811T, and 810T and Sharp’s 904SH. Checking a previous survey on the Spring 2007 model line-up, only two of the Toshiba phones above are new models. According to a directive from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, from April of this year all new 3G phone models must have GPS capability built-in, so it seems that SoftBank has quite a lot of work to do.
Also note that the “Anshin Navi” service mentioned in the Q1SQ2 refers to a service by au that allows parents to track their children, or more correctly, their children’s mobile phone. DoCoMo also have a similar service available through their Sanyo SA800i phone.
Research results
Of the 330 people questioned, 317, or 96.1%, carried mobile phones. They were then asked the following question:
Q1: Does your phone have GPS functionality? (Sample size=317)
Yes (to SQ1) 32.2% No 61.2% Don’t know 6.6% Q1SQ1: Have you ever used your phone’s GPS functionality? (Sample size=102)
Yes (to SQ2) 65.7% No 32.4% Can’t remember 2.0% Q1SQ2: What sort of GPS services have you used? (Sample size=67)
Score Percentage GPS location map 34 50.7% Walking navigator (EZ Navi Walk, NAVITIME, etc) 31 46.3% Local information search 15 22.4% Locating services (Anshin Navi, etc) 6 9.0% Attaching location data to photographs 4 6.0% Games with GPS features 2 3.0% Other 4 6.0%
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