世論 What Japan Thinks

I rarely use my mobile phone camera, with just the occassion snapping of a QR Code or the taking of memos of product names or part numbers for when going shopping, but I would find I missed it if it wasn’t there. To find out how others feel, goo Research conducted a survey (reported on by japan.internet.com) on the subject of mobile phone camera.

Demographics

Over the 8th and 9th of June 2007 goo Research interviewed 1,094 members of their monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.1% of the sample were male, 17.2% in their teens, 19.5% in their twenties, 17.9% in their thirties, 17.5% in their forties, 16.8% in their fifties, and 11.1% aged sixty or older,.

I’m not sure exactly of how many megapixels my mobile’s camera has, but I think it’s somewhere between one and two megapixels, and about 300,000 pixels on the inside camera. However, I wonder how much of the dissatisfaction with the megapixel count comes from setting the image capture size too low then importing the photos to a PC. My camera goes up to 1,280 by 960, but I can only take half a dozen photos before I run out of memory, so I usually use a lower resolution.

Research results

Q1: Does your mobile phone have a camera function? (Sample size=1,094)

Yes	90.1%
No (to Q3)	4.9%
Don’t have a mobile phone (to Q3)	4.9%

Q2: Are you satisfied with your mobile phone’s camera function? (Sample size=986)

Satisfied	56.6%
Dissatisfied	43.4% (to SQ)

Q2SQ: Which of the following aspects of your mobile phone’s camera are you dissatisfied with? (Sample size=451, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Too few pixels (too low resolution)	279	61.9%
Image quality is poor	266	59.0%
Time lag on shutter	161	35.7%
No auto-focus	110	24.4%
Auto-focus is difficult to use	59	13.1%
Other	56	12.4%

Next they asked the 1,009 who have or had a mobile phone with a camera the following question.

Q3: For what purposes do (or did) you take still phones with your mobile phone’s camera? (Sample size=1,009, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Memorial photographs, etc	648	64.2%
As personal memo	616	61.1%
For use on blogs	113	11.2%
For use on SNS diary	104	10.3%
For work	72	7.1%
As art	66	6.5%
Other	35	3.5%

Q4: Are camera functions needed on a mobile phone? (Sample size=1,093)

Very much needed	27.1%
Needed to some extent	45.4%
Not really needed	22.5%
Not needed at all	3.3%
Don’t know	1.7%