世論 What Japan Thinks

I keep wanting to download more games to my phone, but being a stingy git I never quite get round to it. In theory, since wifey has an unlimited packet deal (I keep telling her to use her phone more!) she can download and move to an SD card, then I can move it off the SD card onto my own phone. I must try that sometime. In the meantime, let’s look at a recent survey conducted by Yahoo! Japan Value Insight (ex-infoPLANT) on this topic of mobile phone applications, in particular NTT DoCoMo’s iAppli.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 22nd of June 2007 (this must be a misprint as the text says the survey was conducted over one week) 6,031 people, 57.6% female, self-selected themselves and completed a public questionnaire available through the NTT DoCoMo iMode menuing system. Note that the self-selecting nature of the survey attracts a high percentage of people on unlimited data download plans.

There’s a puzzle game I’ve seen a few people playing that I’d like to get hold of – the idea is to draw a picture in a 20×20 grid or so with a set number of blocks available for each row and column. Does anyone know what this is called? I also had fun doing a Kakuro in a copy of the Guardian I picked up on holiday, so I should search out an electronic version of that too.

Research results

Q1: How often do you use your mobile phone application (iAppli) functionality? (Sample size=6,031)

	All	Male N=2,560	Female N=3,471
Almost every day	61.1%	65.1%	58.1%
Four or five days a week	9.3%	9.1%	9.4%
Two or three days a week	11.1%	11.2%	11.1%
One day a week	7.0%	5.7%	7.9%
Two or three days a week	5.0%	3.5%	6.1%
One day a month or less	5.0%	3.9%	5.8%
Never used any iApplis	1.0%	0.7%	1.2%
Handset does not support iAppli	0.6%	0.7%	0.5%

For men, there was just a small decrease in frequency of usage for the fifty-and-over demographic. However, less than half of all teenage girls used iApplis daily, and fifty-and-over women had the largest group of non- and infrequent users, around double the average for other age groups.

Q2: What kinds of mobile phone applications (iAppli) have you downoaded? (Sample size=5,935, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=2,522	Female N=3,413
Mini-game	69.1%	61.3%	74.9%
Television program listing	42.0%	45.2%	39.7%
Role-playing game	39.5%	43.5%	36.6%
Wallpaper (animation, etc)	34.9%	33.8%	35.7%
Osaifu keitai (electronic cash) application	31.8%	41.3%	24.8%
Other game	30.2%	33.2%	28.0%
Simulation game	27.6%	31.8%	24.5%
Map, congestion information	21.7%	25.7%	18.8%
Timetable, connection information	19.8%	21.4%	18.7%
Weather forecast	17.4%	21.1%	14.7%
Clock	14.7%	16.0%	13.8%
Fortune telling	14.1%	9.0%	17.8%
Mobile banking	11.8%	16.1%	8.6%
Home budget, personal expenses tracking	7.8%	8.1%	7.5%
Schedule management	5.9%	6.5%	5.5%
Stocks information	4.7%	8.4%	1.9%
Kind other than any of the above	2.2%	2.1%	2.3%
Never downloaded an iAppli	0.3%	0.4%	0.3%

I think the last figure is very interesting – almost everyone who has used iApplis has downloaded additional titles in addition to those supplied with the phone.

As one might expect, younger people were much more likely to download all kinds of games than their older counterparts. Almost all of the other genres showed trends towards being favoured by older people.

Q3: Excluding packet charges, about how much per month on average do you spend on mobile phone applications (iAppli)? (Sample size=5,935)

	All	Male N=2,522	Female N=3,413
Up to 99 yen	8.0%	7.7%	8.2%
100 to 199 yen	7.0%	5.6%	8.0%
200 to 299 yen	11.1%	9.9%	11.9%
300 to 499 yen	15.6%	17.0%	14.5%
500 to 999 yen	13.0%	16.3%	10.6%
1,000 to 1,999 yen	6.1%	6.5%	5.8%
2,000 yen or more	3.2%	2.8%	3.4%
Don’t use pay iAppli sites	36.1%	34.2%	37.5%

There was very little difference in spending by age. The two outliers were teenage girls, with almost half (48.8%) not using pay sites, then 43.2% of men fifty and older not parting with any money. Conversely, the oldest female group was the most likely to spend money on applications – only 27.7% said they did not access pay sites.

Q4: From where do you mainly obtain mobile phone applications (iAppli) information? (Sample size=5,935, up to three answers)

	All	Male N=2,522	Female N=3,413
Mobile phone web site	89.8%	88.1%	91.0%
Mobile phone email	40.7%	40.8%	40.6%
Books, magazines	15.1%	19.3%	12.1%
Word of mouth	9.0%	8.7%	9.2%
PC internet	8.9%	12.6%	6.2%
Television	4.2%	4.3%	4.2%
Station posters, other public transport advertising	2.2%	2.5%	1.9%
Newspapers	1.0%	1.5%	0.7%
Radio	0.4%	0.5%	0.3%
Other	2.5%	2.3%	2.5%
Don’t obtain any information	5.2%	6.5%	4.3%

Q5: In the future, how do you think your opportunities to use mobile phone applications (iAppli) will change? (Sample size=5,935)

	All	Male N=2,522	Female N=3,413
Increase	27.9%	35.4%	22.4%
Perhaps increase	31.5%	31.5%	31.4%
Not change	37.1%	29.7%	42.5%
Perhaps decrease	2.6%	2.2%	2.8%
Decrease	1.0%	1.2%	0.8%

As age increased, there was a slight but definite trend of predicting increased usage of iAppli.