With mobile phones becoming an essential item for parents to give their children, and with mobile phone companies advertising child-tracking services, it would be interesting to look at a recent article published by japan.internet.com on the results of a survey conducted by goo Research into children using mobile phones.
Demographics
Between the 16th and 20th of August 2007 1,077 members of goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample was male, 23.6% in their twenties, 22.0% in their thirties, 21.2% in their forties, 20.2% in their fifties, and 13.0% aged sixty or older.
I rather like the current au advertisement for their child-tracking service, so I present it here for your enjoyment.
With the megapixel count in mobile phone cameras getting ever higher and the functions available on the phones ever increasing, goo Research, as reported by japan.internet.com, performed a survey to find out about cell phone camera settings.
Demographics
Between the 24th and 27th of August 2007 1,088 members of goo Research’s online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample was male, 16.6% in their teens, 17.8% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.4% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.
I’d love to see more detailed figureson how the awareness and use of the macro mode, or close-up mode corresponds with use of QR Codes. As far as I am aware, many phones have a dedicated normal mode/close-up mode switch, and when one selects QR Code mode, a big message pops up reminding one to switch the camera into the correct mode. I’ve never understood why there has to be a switch for this or why the phone cannot automatically go into close-up mode when reading these barcodes. Perhaps the DoCoMo official specifications explicitly require such a feature, perhaps due to someone having patents they don’t want to licence regarding automation of this feature? Read the rest of this entry »
One place where mobile phone vendors probably make a reasonable amount of profit is on accessories purchased along with a new phone, as they have the customer already opening their wallet, so pushing a couple of extra bits and bobs onto the punter is a relatively easy sale. To find out how the customer thinks, japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by goo Research into mobile phone accessories.
Demographics
Between the 27th and 30th of July 2007 1,084 members of goo Research’s online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.9% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.4% in their fifties, and 12.2% aged sixty or older.
Looking at Q2, I wonder if there is a possibility that the respondents were confused. I find it rather difficult to believe that less than one in five buy either an AC adaptor or a cradle, or conversely that almost one in five buy a second AC adaptor or cradle, so perhaps there was confusion as to whether or not to indicate that the separately paid for but usually purchased (I suspect) adaptor and cradle were actually to be counted as accessories. Read the rest of this entry »
With all the survey companies keen to jump on the iPhone in Japan opinion bandwagon, here comes the latest offering from the company formally known as infoPLANT, Yahoo! Japan Value Insight with their take on Apple’s iPhone in Japan.
Demographics
Over the 25th and 26th of July 2007 400 members of Value Insight’s online monitor group were chosen to take part in a survey. They were split 50:50 male and female, and similarly the age distribution was 20.0% in each age group teens to the over fifties.
The report below is of the highlights of the survey; the full details of all 13 questions can be purchased for 50,000 yen, or 100,000 yen if you want the raw data too.
I find it interesting in Q5 that people want to spend not more than 22,655 yen, or under 200 US dollars, on the handset, well under half the price in the USA. Will we see a premium pricing plan for the iPhone in Japan? Read the rest of this entry »
I try to restrict my new handset cost to under 10,000 yen, but then there’s always a new power adaptor, phone cradle, 2,000 yen contract renewal fee and a couple of other hidden costs that all add up. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m glad it’s not just me, as whenever we have a video tele-conference at work I always try to hide out of the way of the camera, and just can’t bring myself to look at my own face on screen. I can just about cope with my photo in private, but seeing myself on the big screen is just too much for me! This fact in the headline was one of the interesting facts to come out of a recent survey by Cross Marketing Inc and reported by japan.internet.com on the subject of web cameras.
Demographics
On the 18th and 19th of July 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing Inc’s online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.
Despite Japan Probe suggesting that all that is needed for the iPhone to succeed here in Japan is the ability to play back Gundam anime, I suspect there are perhaps a number of features missing that people expect as standard. To find out if there is any truth behind this suspicion, iShare performed a survey on views regarding the iPhone.
Demographics
Between the 26th of June and the 2nd of July 2007, iShare interviewed by means of a private internet-based questionnaire 1,341 members of its CLUB BBQ free mail forwarding service. Men outweighed females 7:3, 18.3% were in their twenties, 48.2% in their thirties, 24.9% in their forties, and the remaining 8.6% were either fifty or older or in their teens. This group is quite geek/otaku oriented, so there is perhaps a higher level of knowledge of technical matters on display here than in similar surveys with other groups. Note also that sample sizes for each question were not explicitly mentioned so my figures might be wrong.
This is a great survey for me: in Q3, why do people expect SoftBank to carry it? Does it fit their image? Do they imagine they will outbid everyone in desperation? For me, au by KDDI seems a better fit, but I also feel SoftBank would pay anything to get the reseller rights. In Q5, the seemingly odd choice of One Seg (digital terrestrial) television support seems to be the feature most people want to see, and almost a third want the browser downgraded to standard mobile site support, both ahead of what I might have predicted, namely electronic cash support and ring tones. Finally, only Sony and Sharp are seen as being able to top the iPhone, whereas I think Nokia might be able to do something, but they don’t even feature in the list of companies! Read the rest of this entry »
Despite some mediocre reviews Apple’s new iPhone has been apparently flying off the shelves in the USA, and judging by this survey, many in Japan are hoping for an early release in this country too. This was revealed in a survey recently reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc on the topic of Apple’s iPhone
Demographics
On the 6th of July 2007 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor panel employed in private industry or local or national government successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 76.1% were male, 11.5% in their twenties, 44.4% in their thirties, 32.3% in their forties, 8.5% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.
I think personally that the iPhone would not do well in its current state in Japan. First and foremost, the lack of 3G speed would be a major issue for many mobile web users. Second, given that most people are used to the designed-to-fit experience of mobile-targeted sites, a full browser is perhaps not all that necessary. Third, Japanese on the whole do not use nor perhaps want SmartPhones; there is no significant Palm or Blackberry-using demographic that need the business-like features. Fourth, and perhaps the biggest deal-breaker, there is no hook to hang your dangly thingies off! Read the rest of this entry »
Japan may be one of the top producers of the latest home electrical items, but is it a big consumer of what it produces? With the smallness of the average home being perhaps a factor, how many gadgets make their way to the consumer? Recently infoPLANT (who seem to be in the process of changing their name to Yahoo! Japan Value Insight) published the results of a short survey on home electricals ownership and purchasing plans. Note that this survey was conducted just a month before the summer bonus season started, so perhaps some of the respondents were thinking about what they wanted to buy.
Demographics
Over a week from the 29th of May to the 4th of June 2007 infoPLANT made the survey available through the menuing system of NTT DoCoMo’s iMode mobile phone system, where 6,606 people, 63.2% female, self-selected themselves and successfully completed the survey.
Personally, we manage just a big fridge, an air purifier and a video camera, and perhaps we would like sometime to buy a hard disk recorder. Read the rest of this entry »
I rarely use my mobile phone camera, with just the occassion snapping of a QR Code or the taking of memos of product names or part numbers for when going shopping, but I would find I missed it if it wasn’t there. To find out how others feel, goo Research conducted a survey (reported on by japan.internet.com) on the subject of mobile phone camera.
Demographics
Over the 8th and 9th of June 2007 goo Research interviewed 1,094 members of their monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.1% of the sample were male, 17.2% in their teens, 19.5% in their twenties, 17.9% in their thirties, 17.5% in their forties, 16.8% in their fifties, and 11.1% aged sixty or older,.
I’m not sure exactly of how many megapixels my mobile’s camera has, but I think it’s somewhere between one and two megapixels, and about 300,000 pixels on the inside camera. However, I wonder how much of the dissatisfaction with the megapixel count comes from setting the image capture size too low then importing the photos to a PC. My camera goes up to 1,280 by 960, but I can only take half a dozen photos before I run out of memory, so I usually use a lower resolution. Read the rest of this entry »
With the megapixel count in mobile phone cameras getting ever higher and the functions available on the phones ever increasing, goo Research, as reported by japan.internet.com, performed a survey to find out about 
With all the survey companies keen to jump on the 
With the new 2007 summer mobile phone launch completed, with the main focus being on the top end high-specification models, NEPRO Japan came out with a report on a survey into 
I’m glad it’s not just me, as whenever we have a video tele-conference at work I always try to hide out of the way of the camera, and just can’t bring myself to look at my own face on screen. I can just about cope with my photo in private, but seeing myself on the big screen is just too much for me! This fact in the headline was one of the interesting facts to come out of a recent survey by Cross Marketing Inc and reported by japan.internet.com on the subject of 
Despite Japan Probe suggesting that all that is needed for the iPhone to succeed here in Japan is the 
I rarely use my mobile phone camera, with just the occassion snapping of a 
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