Bluetooth in Japan: very little usage reported
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I get the distinct impression in the USA and Europe that Bluetooth is a must-have feature for mobile phones, but in Japan a recent survey said only 5% wanted Bluetooth on their next phone, versus 22% after infra-red. This survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into Bluetooth confirms this lack of interest in Bluetooth.
Demographics
Over the 6th and 7th of February 2008 300 members of the Cross Marketing monitor pool successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The group was split 50:50 male and female, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.
Only a few selected models of mobile phones come with Bluetooth these days, and I’ve never seen anyone in Japan using these earpiece Bluetooth accessories that I saw quite a few times when I was in the USA. I may have once seen someone with Bluetooth headphones, but that’s about it. It might be an interesting survey to discover why exactly people don’t use them.
Q1SQ2 shows how low usage of Bluetooth really is. Although 22.7% of people said they owned a Bluetooth device, these 68 people owned 95 Bluetooth-capable devices between them, making about 1.4 devices per person. From these 95 devices, 79 were master devices, leaving just 16 accessory-class devices, and just four of them had potential to be used with mobile phones.
Oh, and just in case you are in the 43.7% according to this survey, Bluetooth is a short-range low-power wireless standard most often found in (non-Japanese!) mobile phones.
Research results
Q1: Do you know about Bluetooth? (Sample size=300)
Know it well (to SQ1) 7.7% Know something about it (to SQ1) 28.3% Just heard the word (to SQ1) 20.3% Never heard of it 43.7% Q1SQ1: Do you have a device that supports Bluetooth? (Sample size=169)
Yes (to SQ2) 40.2% No 54.4% Don’t know 5.3% This means that from the original sample, 22.7% own a Bluetooth-capable device.
Q1SQ2: What sorts of Bluetooth-capable devices do you have? (Sample size=68, multiple answer)
Votes Percentage Mobile phone 52 76.5% Notebook compter 20 29.4% Mouse 5 7.4% Wireless headphones 4 5.9% USB adapter 3 4.4% Keyboard 3 4.4% Desktop computer 2 2.9% Car navigation 2 2.9% Wireless headset 1 1.5% Other 3 4.4%
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Japanese people don’t use bluetooth, instead using infra-red because it’s Japanese. If the Japanese had of came up with Bluetooth, they would be praising it to no end. But because bluetooth is better than infra-red, they refuse to use it and acknowledge that it’s better than infra-red. It’s pathetic the way they want to exchange a phone number or some pictures by holding their damn phones right up to each others, and STILL it fails to transfer.
They are blinded by their nationalism.