世論 What Japan Thinks

A recent survey from iShare looking at mobile phone types found that clamshells with the standard ten keys were both the most popular current phone and future phone.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 12th of April 2010 520 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.3% of the sample were male, 31.0% were in their twenties, 30.2% in their thirties, and 38.8% in their forties.

Interestingly enough, touch panel smartphones were around twice as popular with males as females. I got the impression from other surveys that there was more significant iPhone penetration with women.

If I can afford an unlimited data packet plan, my next phone will be a flat touch panel smartphone; if I decide to stay stingy and stick with email, it will be a ten key clamphone like my current.

Research results

Q1: Do you have a mobile phone? (Sample size=520)

	All	Male N=303	Female N=217
Yes (to SQs)	87.7%	84.2%	92.6%
No	12.3%	15.8%	7.4%

Q1SQ1: What kind of mobile phone do you currently have? (Sample size=456)

	All	Male N=255	Female N=201
10 key clamshell	66.4%	61.6%	72.6%
10 key slider	9.2%	7.8%	10.9%
Touch panel flat	8.1%	12.9%	2.0%
10 key plus touch panel clamshell	4.4%	3.9%	5.0%
10 key candybar	4.2%	3.9%	4.5%
10 key plus touch panel slider	2.6%	4.3%	0.5%
Querty key plus touch panel slider	1.5%	2.7%	0.0%
Querty key slider	1.3%	1.2%	1.5%
Querty key candybar	0.9%	0.8%	1.0%
Ten key plus querty key separate	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
Other	1.3%	0.8%	2.0%

As the above question is single answer, and given the significant percentage of people without mobile phones, perhaps the question is more “What kind of phone are you answering this question?”

The touch panel flat is of course the typical smartphone, the querty key candybar is the BlackBerry or the Samsung clone, and the separate phone is this impressive design.

Q1SQ2: How many characters per email do you use on average? (Sample size=456)

	All	Male N=255	Female N=201
Less than 10	3.7%	3.5%	4.0%
10 to 49	59.9%	69.8%	47.3%
50 to 99	23.5%	19.2%	28.9%
100 to 199	7.7%	6.3%	9.5%
200 or more	5.3%	1.2%	10.4%

You’ll note that “Don’t send email” was not an option!

Q1SQ3: Overall, how would you rate you current phone’s ease of use? (Sample size=456)

	All	Male N=255	Female N=201
100 points	8.6%	10.2%	6.5%
70 points	59.6%	53.3%	67.7%
50 points	26.1%	28.6%	22.9%
30 points	4.6%	6.7%	2.0%
Zero points	1.1%	1.2%	1.0%

Q2: What kind of mobile phone would you want to use if you were to upgrade or buy a new one? (Sample size=456)

	All	Male N=303	Female N=217
10 key clamshell	26.5%	24.8%	29.0%
10 key plus touch panel clamshell	10.6%	8.6%	13.4%
Touch panel flat	10.6%	13.5%	6.5%
Querty key plus touch panel slider	6.3%	7.6%	4.6%
10 key candybar	4.8%	6.6%	2.3%
10 key slider	4.6%	3.3%	6.5%
10 key plus touch panel slider	3.7%	3.0%	4.6%
Querty key slider	3.1%	3.3%	2.8%
Ten key plus querty key separate	2.5%	3.6%	0.9%
Querty key candybar	1.5%	1.7%	1.4%
Other	1.7%	1.7%	1.8%
Not particularly bothered	24.0%	22.4%	26.3%

There was also a breakdown of desired phones versus email length, but I couldn’t see any trends.