世論 What Japan Thinks

Given that Microsoft started last year giving away the rather useful Microsoft Security Essentials and that this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into anti-virus software found that price was the biggest factor when choosing a package, one would have thought that the percentage of paid software users would have been lower.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 11th of January 2011 1,081 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the survey were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

One key reason for the high rate of paid software is, I suspect, heavy television advertising by at least two or three vendors raising awareness of the need to buy amongst users. However, I would admit that it is also possible that it is the high rate of payers that spurs the advertising market rather than the other way around.

As mentioned above, I now use Microsoft Security Essentials which does everything I need. I used to use Avast!, but it started nagging me in the autumn to upgrade to the paid version but didn’t seem to have any obvious way to turn off the warnings.

Research results

Q1: Do you currently use anti-virus software on your home computer? (Sample size=1,081)

Yes (to SQ1)	83.5%
No	9.6%
Don’t know	6.8%
Not currently using a PC at home	0.1%

Q1SQ1: Is your currently-installed anti-virus software paid for or free? (Sample size=900)

Paid for (to SQ2)	58.7%
Free (to SQ2)	32.3%
Both paid for and free (to SQ2)	5.1%
Don’t know	3.9%

Q1SQ2: What are the deciding factors when choosing anti-virus software? (Sample size=865, multiple answer)

Software price	51.1%
Low performance, memory overhead	50.6%
Virus detection rate	47.1%
Easy to set up	36.9%
Has firewall functionality	15.7%
Has spam filter	12.9%
Has phishing site detection	11.8%
Other	5.0%
Don’t know	10.9%