世論 What Japan Thinks

infoPLANT recently published the results of a survey on the topic of electronic publishing contents consumption on mobile phones, or in other words reading books and magazines on a cell phone.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 15th of May 2007 5,380 people chose to complete a survey made publicly-available through NTT DoCoMo’s iMode mobile phone menuing system. 62.8% of the sample was female. As has been noted before and will be highlighted within the article below, this tends to bias the survey towards heavy users on unlimited usage plans, but unlimited plans are becoming the norm these days, with now over 30% of DoCoMo users on fixed-price plans.

Note that perhaps interestingly the original Japanese survey uses the term “comic”, not “manga” to describe the picture book format, so please don’t get upset by me using “comic” too!

I’ve personally never downloaded any reading material to my mobile phone, as I love the tangibility of real paper, and squinting at a tiny screen must be tiring on both the eyes and the arms.

SoftBank Mobile have also just recently started advertising that they have over 500 comic titles available for free download.

Research results

Q1A: Have you ever downloaded download electronic books or comics? (Sample size=5,380)

	All	Male N=2,000	Female N=3,380
Have downloaded (to SQs)	40.2%	34.4%	43.6%
Know about them, but haven’t downloaded (to Q2)	51.6%	57.9%	47.8%
Don’t know about them	8.3%	7.9%	8.5%

Q1B: Have you ever downloaded download electronic books or comics? (Sample size=5,380, by plan type)

	Unlimited packet plan N=4,688	Not unlimited packet plan N=692
Have downloaded (to SQs)	44.0%	13.6%
Know about them, but haven’t downloaded (to Q2)	48.7%	71.2%
Don’t know about them	7.3%	15.2%

This means that 87.1% of the sample are on unlimited usage plans.

Q1SQ1A: About how often do you usually download electronic books or comics? (Sample size=2,161)

	All	Male N=685	Female N=1,476
Five times a month or more	11.9%	7.7%	13.8%
Three or four times a month	8.3%	5.3%	9.7%
Once or twice a month	17.8%	16.5%	18.4%
Once every two or three months	15.6%	12.8%	16.9%
Once every six months	13.2%	15.6%	12.1%
Less than than	33.2%	42.0%	29.1%

By age, almost half of men over 50 downloaded at least one title per month, 15 percentage points above the average for men, although there was only 44 people over fifty who were mobile contents downloaded, so the sample size is not too reliable.

Q1SQ1B: About how often do you usually download electronic books or comics? (Sample size=2,161, by plan type)

	Unlimited packet plan N=2,067	Not unlimited packet plan N=94
Five times a month or more	12.3%	3.2%
Three or four times a month	8.3%	8.5%
Once or twice a month	18.1%	10.6%
Once every two or three months	15.7%	13.8%
Once every six months	13.0%	19.1%
Less than than	32.7%	44.7%

As one might expect, nearly twice as many on unlimited plans downloaded at least once a month, when compared with those on pay-as-you-use contracts.

Q1SQ2: Which genres of electronic books or comics have you downloaded? (Sample size=2,161, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=685	Female N=1,476
Female-oriented comics	57.8%	9.1%	80.5%
Male-oriented comics	37.9%	70.1%	23.0%
Novels	32.6%	25.3%	36.0%
Hobbies, lifestyles	12.5%	16.5%	10.7%
Photo collections	5.6%	15.2%	1.1%
Non-fiction	5.1%	5.4%	5.0%
Language learning	3.2%	3.6%	3.0%
Business books	2.9%	5.5%	1.6%
Other	3.5%	4.2%	3.2%

Looking at the detailed age breakdown, over half of teenage girls downloaded novels. Howver, there is a genre of , often written on mobiles themselves, which perhaps appeals strongly to female teenagers.

For photo collections, barely 2% of females under fifty had downloaded, but 12.0% of those aged fifty or over had! One might hazard a guess that this might be due to the middle-aged boom in Korean stars?

Q1SQ3: When do you read electronic books or comics? (Sample size=2,161, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=685	Female N=1,476
On waking up	2.6%	2.5%	2.7%
At breakfast	0.6%	0.7%	0.5%
Going to or from school or work	16.8%	22.2%	14.4%
During school or work	3.9%	7.0%	2.5%
At lunchtime	10.6%	14.6%	8.8%
On returning home	21.4%	25.4%	19.6%
At dinner time	2.3%	2.5%	2.2%
Before bed	62.3%	48.2%	68.8%

Q2: Which of the following is close to how you think of electronic books or comics? (Sample size=4,935, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=1,843	Female N=3,092
Would want a full range of titles	24.9%	24.7%	25.0%
An all-you-can-read fixed monthly price is good	23.8%	22.1%	24.8%
Don’t want an all-you-can-read plan, but just buy the titles I want	17.5%	16.0%	18.4%
Cheaper than books and magazines from a bookstore	12.2%	13.5%	11.5%
Would like animated books	10.6%	13.5%	8.8%
More expensive than books and magazines from a bookstore	9.7%	7.9%	10.8%
Would like audio books	7.9%	10.5%	6.4%
Characters are easy to read	5.7%	6.2%	5.4%
Other	6.3%	5.5%	6.9%
Nothing in particular	36.7%	39.2%	35.3%

Q3: In the future, do you think your use of electronic books or comics will increase? (Sample size=4,935)

	All	Male N=1,843	Female N=3,092
Increase	20.4%	22.8%	19.0%
Perhaps increase	39.3%	38.4%	39.8%
Not change	32.7%	30.6%	34.0%
Perhaps decrease	3.8%	3.9%	3.7%
Decrease	3.8%	4.3%	3.4%