Mobile phone users and email
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One of the biggest differences in standard mobile phone usage between Japan and the West is that almost every phone here supports full internet email by default, with for at least the last three or four years support for HTML graphic email, and even now simple Flash authoring, and older handsets even have a fall-back mode to allow them to view graphic mail online. On the other hand, the West is still wedded to SMS. With that in mind, let’s have a look at a recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into computer usage of mobile phone users.
Demographics
Between the 10th and 14th of July 2009 1,048 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private mobile phone based questionnaire. 54.5% of the sample were female, 2.8% in their teens, 26.6% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 23.5% in their forties, and 5.8% aged fifty or older.
Note that to register as a goo Research monitor one must first sign up with a computer (or a mobile phone with a full browser), then join their mobile monitor group, so as can be seen below, all bar one percent of the sample also have a computer, which does bias the sample one way. However, most mobile-only surveys tend to bias the sample towards heavier mobile users, but even with this bias, the high number who treat their mobile phone as their main email tool is quite surprising to me.
Research results
First, from the original sample, all bar 10, or 1,038 people, also had computers.
Q1: Which is your main email tool; computer or mobile phone? (Sample size=1,038)
Computer 40.4% Mobile phone 39.0% Can’t say one or the other 20.6% Q2A: Was your first email experience on a computer or a mobile phone? (Sample size=1,038)
Computer 65.7% Mobile phone 33.0% Can’t say one or other 1.3% Q2B: Was your first email experience on a computer or a mobile phone? (Sample size=1,038, by age)
Computer Mobile Can’t say Teens
N=3063.3% 33.3% 3.3% Twenties
N=27545.8% 52.0% 2.2% Thirties
N=42767.7% 31.6% 0.7% Forties
N=24680.1% 18.7% 1.2% Fifties
N=6085.0% 15.0% 0.0% The teens age band seems to break the pattern, but wih just 30 people in the sample there is less confidence in the accuracy.
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There is a large percent of people that don’t seem to know. I guess those are ones that refuse to answer?
This looks very good for those of us involved in making email on the phone a common thing in the west. There’s a huge misconception in the west that you get business emails only on blackberry. The education has to start, and if the uptake here looks anything like Japan then we’ll be fine