世論 What Japan Thinks

It’s time for another installment of the goo Research mobile phone upgrade needs survey, the 41st in the series of monthly looks at people’s upgrade plans. This time one question looks at the Autumn and Winter 2008 models, with all three major carriers having just released, or being in the process of releasing, new models.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 14th of November 2008 exactly 1,000 members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.2% of the sample were female, 1.1% in their teens. 18.9% in their twenties. 38.3% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, and 16.5% aged fifty or older.

In Q1 it is interesting to note that SoftBank is down a couple of percentage points compared to the average level reported, however this might just be a sampling blip for this survey.

I currently have no plans to upgrade, although on Sunday I might look at a shop I know that should be selling this summer’s models at knock-down prices as most of the new phones from docomo are minor cosmetic revisions of the summer phones; Panasonic has added a two-way keyboard to go from a P906i to a P01-A, Sharp an 8 megapixel camera differentiating their SH-01A from the SH906i, and NEC have a fancy ball joint on their N-01A.

I have my eye on the Sharp SH-04A smartphone, not out until February or March 2009, as I was tempted to jump ship to Willcom for their Sharp 03 earlier this year. However, I’ll have to wait and see how they price it, but I’m not terribly hopeful of getting a decent deal.
Read the rest of this entry »

Whenever I get around to upgrading my desktop display, I think it will be a wide-screen monitor that I go for; sadly, this recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into home computers did not discuss people’s purchase intentions.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 10th of November 2008 1,034 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed an internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 15.9% in their fifties, and 11.9% aged sixty or older.

It’s interesting to note in Q1 that notebooks outnumber desktops at home, and surprising to see one in four notebooks are wide-screen, even allowing for dual-head users with an extra monitor plugged in.
Read the rest of this entry »

After mentioning in a survey earlier this week about how smoking was my second-favourite survey topic, along comes this survey from DMSDRIVE Research Inc on my favourite topic in Japan, tooth care, in particular electric toothbrushes. As a bonus, this survey also touches on the use of this equipment by smokers.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 27th of August 2008 9,029 memebers of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. 51.6% of the sample were female, 1.2% in their teens, 13.4% in their twenties, 33.8% in their thirties, 29.9% in their forties, 14.9% in their fifties, and 6.8% aged sixty or older. As a bonus statistic, 27.2% were current smokers, 19.3% ex-smokers, and 53.5% had never smoked.

Note that Sunstar make cheap-and-cheerful battery-operated toothbrushes that they sell alongside their manual counterparts in almost all pharmacies and supermarkets, where as all the other manufacturers make proper brushes.

I have a Braun Oral-B that I bought with points from a credit card, but I only use it at the weekends as cleaning and drying after every use during the week is too much bother!
Read the rest of this entry »

Even on my quite old analogue tube television, digital looks very, very nice, and this is the main reason for nine in ten being completely satisfied with terrestrial digital television broadcasting in Japan, according to this survey on the topic, goo Research’s third regular look at digital TV, and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 31st of October and the 4th of November 2008 1,044 members of the goo Research online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, and 27.7% aged fifty or older.

I remember when I bought my television they were showing full digital-ready televisions alongside (with a decent markup at that time) at Yodobashi Camera and the picture quality between the two was incomparable. However, I noticed that the sample DVD they were playing on the set we eventually bought was a DVD encoded at a quite low bit rate, and I wouldn’t have put it past them to have been deliberately tampering with the signal to add a little noise.

Conversely, I’ve noticed on large-screen full digital LCDs and plasmas any flaws in the source material are crystal clear and… I feel I sound like an old fogey declaring that vinyl beats CD!

Read the rest of this entry »

I was prompted to translate this survey by Mari’s recent mention of such cars. Ita-sha, literally painful cars (to look at, or from the point of view of the car?), painted up with anime characters of the so-called moe kind, which usually means infeasibly large-breasted schoolgirls. This recent survey published by iShare on the topic of car customisation found almost one in three willing, to use the vernacular, to rice up their cars.

Demographics

Between the 25th and 27th of October 2008 424 members of the free email forwarding service CLUB BBQ completed a private online questionnaire. 53.8% of the sample were male, 15.3% in their twenties, 49.3% in their thirties, 26.7% in their forties, and 8.7% in their teens or fifty or older. The sample is a bit small to draw conclusions from, but the topic is quite fun so it would be a shame not to translate this one.

I’ve never seen a manga-adorned car myself, although there is no shortage of be-spoilered and be-skirted mini-vans farting around town with their after-market exhausts which certainly qualify as ita-sha in terms of my own eyes and ears.
Read the rest of this entry »

This rather a bit too short to be really useful report published on japan.internet.com regarding goo Research’s fourth regular electronic money survey revealed that the Osaifu Keitai feature in most phones go unused.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 23rd of October 2008 1,093 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed an internet-based questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample were male, 16.5% were in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, and 27.7% aged fifty or older.

Note that in Q2 Osaifu Keitai (literally Mobile Wallet) is a trademarked service of docomo, the main promoter of electronic cash, but now most phones from the three big operators come with the FeliCa chip inside, ready to work with most electronic cash providers.
Read the rest of this entry »

Here comes the fortieth regular cellphone upgrade needs survey by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 6th and 10th of October 2008 exactly 1,000 cellphone users from the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.4% of the sample were male, 2.1% in their teens, 18.5% in their twenties, 34.1% in their thirties, 26.8% in their forties, and 18.5% aged fifty or older.

In Q4 one might be surprised by seeing that just 7.6% of people rate Flash support as important, but I wonder how much of this is due to lack of awareness rather than lack of interest? The newest docomo phones now have decome-anime (decoration mail animation), which is basically simple Flash authoring, inserting your own message into an animation, similar to features currently only available through online greeting cards.
Read the rest of this entry »

This survey from MyVoice is their third home use air conditioner survey. I thought I had translated their second air conditioner survey last year, but it turns out it was from DIMSDRIVE Research instead. And it was more interesting…

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2008 15,465 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online survey. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teeens, 15% in their twenties, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% in their fifties.

I looked at the previous survey and I discovered I said just about everything I know about Japanese air conditioners! I do get people searching occasionally for Japanese air conditioner manuals – the functionality is often rather complex and if you can’t read Japanese it’s difficult to know what to do. Now, there’s an idea for a Web 2.0 site – www.rimoconmaster.com (rimocon being the Japanese abbreviation for REMOte CONtroller), upload a photo of your remote (and rice cooker, microwave, etc) with the buttons labeled, or without them labeled and get other users to fill in the functions.
Read the rest of this entry »

In Japanese, an SLR is 一眼レフ, ichigan refu, very much a direct translation of Single-Lens Reflex camera. However, it can be a bit of a mouthful and the Japanese do like abbreviating things, and along with compact digital camera (which is a direct loan word from English), there are many abbreviations that people have adopted. To find out what they are, goo Research conducted a survey reported on by japan.internet.com into digital cameras.

Demographics

Between the 25th and 29th of September 2008 1,084 members of the goo Research online monitor panel successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 12.4% aged sixty or older.

I usually call my point and click (a pink Lumix) a digi-camé in both Japanese and English. I’ve never really had the reason to call a digital SLR anything in Japanese, however.
Read the rest of this entry »

A recent survey reported on by ITmedia and conducted by ASCII Media Works looked at Mac users, in particular contrasting them with Windows users.

Demographics

In mid-September 2008 278 Mac users and 494 Windows PC users who were memebers of the ASCII General Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The age and sex profiles were not noted, although given the small amount of housewives and given that ASCII is a computer magazine, the respondent pool appears to be mostly male.

There’s so many great figures in this survey – Mac users earn more, are more creative and are more interested in foreign goods, whereas Windows users are more conservative and like the same old same. The most stunning figure, however, was for liked mobile phone manufacturers in Q7; not surprisingly over two in five Mac users were iPhone fans, but a surprisingly-low 5% of Windows users expressed an interest. Following up, Q8 showed that over half as many again Mac users were with SoftBank; remember, SoftBank carry the iPhone, and with similar percentages for other carriers, one must conclude that around one in ten Mac owners have bought iPhones to accompany their phones from other carriers.
Read the rest of this entry »