世論 What Japan Thinks

The headline reveals a rather obvious conclusion from a survey by Ceres Inc into LINE (an extremely popular chat app) usage, which was reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Over the 6th and 7th of February 2013 806 LINE users aged 16 or older competed a smartphone-based survey. More detailed demographics are not given, but the sample most likely came from users of the moppy web site.

I’ve never downloaded LINE myself, and in fact had never even used chat even casually until last week, when I got invited into a group chat on Google+ for smartphones. It’s been an ongoing discussion which I’ve been finding rather fun to participate in, and I can now understand the attraction of text chat services! However, due to me being a stingy git, I only take part when my train journey to and from work takes me past a public wi-fi point.

Note that stickers are basically clipart emoticons that you can paste into your chat; the Japanese term is “stamp”.

Research results

Q1: What feature on LINE do you use the most? (Sample size=806)

Talk (text chat)	67.4%
Group Talk (group text chat)	12.9%
Game	8.6%
Voice calls	7.2%
Coupons	1.1%
Official public accounts	1.0%
Home Timeline	0.6%
Information (news, weather, etc)	0.6%
Community (LINE cafe, etc)	0.4%
Other	0.2%

Q2: What do you find convenient about LINE? (Sample size=806, multiple answer)

Easy to use chat	68.6%
Free voice calls	56.3%
Can chat with lots of people	41.4%
Can see if messages have been read	33.4%
Stickers are good	30.4%
Connects with phone’s address book	17.6%
Connects with other apps, games	9.2%
High-quality voice calls	6.7%
Home Timeline is good	3.6%
Information (news, weather, etc) has volume, is fast	3.2%
Other	1.1%

Q3: How many stickers have you bought? (Sample size=806)

None at all	82.4%
One or two	9.8%
Three to five	5.0%
Six to nine	1.7%
Ten or more	1.1%