世論 What Japan Thinks

goo Research recently took a look at the lightly related topics of web sites and photograph printing.

Demographics

Between the 30th of August and the 2nd of September 2011 1,010 computer-using and mobile phone-owning members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.3% of the sample were male, 16.8% were in their teens, 20.5% in their twenties, 19.6% in their thirties, 21.4% in their forties, and 21.7% in their fifties. Furthermore, 50.7% used standard mobile phones and 49.3% smartphones, 54.8% had laptops as their primary computer at home, 44.9% with desktops, and 0.4% with tablets.

I print out stuff about once a month or so, usually emails; before you condemn me for wasting paper, in my defense they are emails from my mother and I translate them with the in-laws. Perhaps if I had a smartphone, or even a tablet, I could save a sheet of paper or two a year…

Research results

Q1: Do you have a printer at home? (Sample size=1,010)

	Have one (to SQ1, SQ2)	Used to have one	Never had one
All	90.8%	5.1%	4.1%
Laptop N=553	89.0%	5.2%	5.8%
Desktop N=453	93.2%	5.1%	1.8%
Tablet N=4	75.0%	0.0%	25.0%

Q1SQ1: Is your printer connected up to a computer? (Sample size=917)

Yes, always ready to go	75.6%
No, usually have it tidied away	24.4%

Q1SQ2: About how often do you print at home? (Sample size=917)

Almost every day (to SQ3)	4.0%
Few times a week (to SQ3)	19.3%
Few times a month (to SQ3)	41.5%
Few times every two or three months (to SQ3)	16.5%
Few times every six months (to SQ3)	7.4%
Few times a year (to SQ3)	5.7%
Once a year (to SQ3)	1.4%
Almost never, never use it	4.1%

Over a third of the over-fifties printed at least a few times a week, whilst just 10.5% of those in their twenties did.

For the next question, separate columns were presented for smartphone and feature phone users, even though the question was about printing from computers. Perhaps the way to read this table is what kinds of information can be used directly from a smartphone versus being too inconvenient or expensive to view on a standard feature phone.

Q1SQ3: What sorts of things, sites do you often print at home? (Sample size=879, multiple answer)

	All	Smartphones N=436	Feature phones N=443
Maps	55.1%	52.1%	58.0%
Coupons, discount tickets	46.0%	43.3%	48.5%
Recipies	20.8%	20.4%	21.2%
Tickets (plane e-tickets, etc)	17.6%	17.9%	17.4%
Purchase receipts, confirmation screens	17.2%	19.3%	15.1%
Routes	12.6%	10.6%	14.7%
Purchased, reserved physical product information pages	9.3%	10.1%	8.6%
Purchased, reserved intangible product information pages	8.2%	8.9%	7.4%
News articles	5.7%	5.7%	5.6%
Email	4.9%	6.0%	3.8%
Schedules, calendars	2.3%	2.8%	1.8%
Blogs	1.4%	0.7%	2.0%
SNS	0.5%	0.2%	0.7%
Twitter, bulletin boards	0.3%	0.7%	0.0%
Other	5.7%	6.9%	4.5%
Don’t print web pages at home	10.1%	11.2%	9.0%

Q2: What do you feel dissatisifed about regarding printing out web pages? (Sample size=1,010, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=548	Female N=462
Adverts, other unneeded information gets printed	57.5%	52.7%	63.2%
Paper size and printed page don’t match up	39.3%	38.3%	40.5%
Ink issues (having to buy, change cartridges, blocked ink, etc)	30.4%	28.6%	32.5%
Only part of the bit I want to print gets printed	25.1%	24.3%	26.2%
Paper issues (having to buy, set up, getting jammed, etc)	8.6%	8.0%	9.3%
Noise when printing	8.0%	7.1%	9.1%
Doesn’t print out in greyscale	6.5%	6.9%	6.1%
Other	1.4%	1.3%	1.5%
No particular dissatisfactions	20.2%	23.9%	15.8%

Q3: How often do you take photos with your mobile phone? (Sample size=1,010)

	All	Smartphones N=498	Feature phones N=512	Male N=548	Female N=462
Often	28.1%	36.1%	20.3%	23.2%	34.0%
Sometimes	44.7%	44.0%	45.3%	46.0%	43.1%
Rarely	18.5%	19.5%	21.1%	21.9%	14.5%
Never	5.4%	3.4%	7.4%	6.8%	3.9%
Don’t have camera on mobile phone	3.3%	0.6%	5.9%	2.2%	4.5%

There followed two graphs describing how people saved and shared photos by camera type and by camera versus smartphone and feature phone, but there was a lack of exact values, so it is a bit difficult to describe. However, standard digital camera photographs got saved more often to hard disk, printed out, and backed up to CD or DVD, whereas mobile phone pictures were more often saved to memory card or just deleted. For sharing, mobile phones most often used email, whereas digital camera photes were most often shared by printing them out.