世論 What Japan Thinks

With most mobile phones these days coming in at over 50,000 yen – interestingly, for docomo at least, most of their smartphone range is well under half the price of the feature phones – it surely must be scaring a lot of people off upgrading. This recent survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into mobile phone price and usage fees revealed such a trend.

Demographics

Between the 26th and 29th of November 2009 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 50:50 male and female, 2.7% in their teens, 17.3% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

Looking at docomo’s range (I am a docomo user), it seems to be anything that supports docomo’s walled garden iMode service gets a price tag of around 60,000 yen, but the smartphones which don’t are between 15,000 and 30,000 yen. The only exception seems to be LG devices; they have recently been trying to break into the Japanese market and are embracing the Japanese standards of decomail and emoji feature phones, but in order to get over the psychological hurdle of not being Japanese, they are using price as a weapon.

In addition, I work for a mobile phone manufacturer, and even though the company sells their own products in the on-site shops, even with staff discounts we are still being asked to pay 45,000 yen for even the year-old phones, and for that womderful discount are expected to migrate our address books from one device to another all by ourselves.

Research results

From the sample, 281 people, or 93.7%, had mobile phones. They were areked the following.

Q1: What do you think about the price of current handsets? (Sample size=281)

Too expensive	68.7%
A little expensive	22.8%
About right	3.9%
A little cheap	0.0%
Too cheap	0.0%
Don’t know prices, cannot judge	4.6%

Q2: How satisfied are you with your current basic monthly fee? (Sample size=281)

Completely satisfied	3.2%
Not dissatisfied	31.3%
Feel it is a little expensive	38.8%
Feel it is expensive	19.9%
Feel it is too expensive	6.8%

Q3: Which aspect of mobile phone costs would you most want to be cheaper? (Sample size=281)

Handset price	31.7%
Basic monthly fee	20.3%
Unlimited data plan charges	15.7%
Call charges	15.3%
Data packet charges	13.9%
Other	0.4%
Nothing in particular	2.8%