世論 What Japan Thinks

Rather than text-based smilies that we’ve looked at in earlier surveys, this time we look at the emoji graphical icons that the three main Japanese mobile operators all support to varying degrees, called 絵文字, emoji, picture characters. Here is a full table of the set of emoji common across the three main carriers, NTT DoCoMo, SoftBank, and EzWeb (au and TU-KA from KDDI) so you can see for yourself how good or bad each provider’s art work is. Recently, MyVoice investigated this subject of mobile phone emoji graphical icon usage.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 5th of June 2007 13,158 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a web-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties or older.

Note that some of the newer DoCoMo phones, such as the Panasonic P703i come with an enormous library of pseudo-emoji, implemented as embedded images in HTML mail.

Research results

Q1: Which mobile phone provider do you currently use? (Sample size=13,158)

DoCoMo	43.3%
au	28.7%
SoftBank	19.8%
WILLCOM	2.4%
Other	0.7%
Don’t have a mobile phone	5.2%

Q2: Do you use emoji in mail you write? (Sample size=mobile phone users)

Often use	36.4%
Sometimes use	42.0%
Don’t use	19.4%
Don’t know about them or how to use them	2.1%
No answer	0.2%

Q3: What kinds of emoji do you use a lot? (Sample size=emoji users, up to three answers)

Faces	89.0%
Emotions	55.4%
Weather	27.8%
Symbols	26.2%
Vehicles, buildings	21.3%
Food, drink	20.5%
Animals	16.6%
Flowers, trees	8.4%
Tools	7.0%
Other	2.2%
No answer	0.3%

Q4: What kinds of emoji do you want to use more of in the future? (Sample size=emoji users, up to three answers)

Emotions	48.4%
Faces	45.8%
Food, drink	24.8%
Tools	19.1%
Symbols	15.0%
Animals	14.5%
Vehicles, buildings	12.2%
Flowers, trees	11.8%
Weather	5.1%
Other	3.6%
None in particular	18.3%
No answer	0.4%

Q5: How satisified are you with the emoji on your mobile phone? (Sample size=emoji users)

Satisfied (to SQ1)	16.4%
Somewhat satisfied (to SQ1)	42.5%
Can’t say either way	23.1%
Not very satisfied (to SQ2)	14.3%
Dissatisfied (to SQ2)	2.7%
No answer	1.0%

Q5SQ1: Why are you satisfied with the emoji on your mobile phone? (Sample size=satisfied emoji users, up to three answers)

Pictures are cute	53.6%
Pictures are simple	31.6%
Colourful	30.6%
Animations are cute	29.0%
Lots of kinds of emoji	25.5%
Single colour so easy to understand	11.0%
Other	4.6%
No answer	1.0%

Q5SQ2: Why are you dissatisfied with the emoji on your mobile phone? (Sample size=dissatisfied emoji users, up to three answers)

Few kinds of emoji	72.2%
Prefer the design of other companies’ emoji	34.9%
Don’t think they are cute	29.0%
Pictures are thin and difficult to understand	15.1%
Other	8.1%
No answer	1.1%

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