世論 What Japan Thinks

An interesting survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into office software on home computers found that free suites are more popular.

Demographics

Between the 9th and 14th of August 2011 1,065 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.4% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

Note that I suspect that a number of people who got Microsoft Office or Works bundled with their system may have reported this as free software.

For myself, I occasionally use Open Office (Libre Office). I mostly use their Excel clone from that suite.

Research results

First of all, 81.4% of the sample, or 867 people, had some form of office software installed. They were asked the following.

Q: Do you use free or paid office software? (Sample size=867)

Paid software only	36.6%
Free software only	39.9%
Both free and paid software	9.2%
Forgot, don’t know	14.3%

Of the 397 people who had paid software, the most popular office suite was Microsoft Office, with 379 people, or 95.5%, using it. Second was Kingsoft Office, with a mere 13 people, or 3.3%, using it. The free software used was sadly not reported.