世論 What Japan Thinks

It’s difficult trying to work out the meaning from the results of a questionnaire into Japanese people’s understanding of English computer-related technical terms, so I’ll just present the results of a survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into computers.

Demographics

Between the 19th and 23rd of March 2009 1,062 members of the goo Research monitors completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.5% of the sample were male, 17.1% in their teens, 18.8% in their twenties, 19.3% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 15.9% in their fifties, and 12.3% aged sixty or older.

That definition of UMPC is not really what I thought. I wouldn’t have said it had to be a tablet, but a thumb-driven keyboard and looking like a seriously-shrunk laptop with built-in mobile phone, with the WILLCOM L4 being the prime example that springs to mind. Incidentally, I’ve played with that beast and it seems to be trying to run Vista in far too little RAM, as even after ten minutes it was still busy whirring the disk trying to start up! I gave up on it at that point.

Research results

Q1: Have you ever heard the term “Netbook”? (Sample size=1,062)

Yes (to SQ)	36.1%
No	63.9%

Those who answered Yes were told that a Netbook was a low-spec small form-factor laptop but with just enough horsepower to do email and browse the web, etc. They were then asked the following question.

Q1SQ: Is the above definition what you thought a Netbook was? (Sample size=383)

Yes, knew that already	53.8%
Yes, knew most of that	35.5%
No, different to what I thought	4.4%
Only just heard the name before	6.3%

Q2: Have you ever heard the term “UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC)”? (Sample size=1,062)

Yes (to SQ)	44.0%
No	56.0%

Those who answered Yes were told that a UMPC was a lightweight tablet PC with a touch panel interface, wireless LAN, etc. They were then asked the following question.

Q2SQ: Is the above definition what you thought a UMPC was? (Sample size=467)

Yes, knew that already	20.6%
Yes, knew most of that	48.4%
No, different to what I thought	9.2%
Only just heard the name before	21.8%