世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently published the results of research by Cross Marketing Inc into car navigation systems. As usual for Cross Marketing, the demographics of the 320 car drivers that completed the internet-based survey were exactly 50.0% of each sex and 25.0% of each age group from twenties to fifties. One thing not made clear in the results is whether or not the people interviewed drove the car for work or leisure, and whether the car was privately owned or a company car.

Car navigation is a wonderful thing, especially in Japan with its rather quirky way of designating addresses and a bit of a dearth of road signs. One minus point is that given the rate that new roads are built, even just a one year old map data set can be out-of-date. For instance, just about every time I have rented a car and gone any significant distance I’ve ended up on a bit of road not on the car navi’s map. Conversely, last time I drove, thanks to the car navi we found a road through the hill at the back of our house, then another rather fun single-track one round the back of the next hill, saving us getting stuck in a 5 kilometre jam in the process.
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japan.internet.com published the results of the latest survey by JR Tokai Express Research, conducted at the end of September into the usage of video contents on mobile phones and other portable devices. They interviewed 330 people from their internet monitor panel. 72.1% were male, 18.8% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

I’m still looking for my ideal video playback device; around iPod Nano size, but with a screen covering all of one face. Battery life would need to be around four hours, or two hours plus external battery pack for emergencies, although two hours is perhaps borderline. I’ll be buying a new phone, a P702iD, which apparently has video playback from SD card, but as to the quality, I’ll have to wait and see. I’d love to be able to download on my PC the latest BBC news overnight and have an SD card waiting for me in the morning loaded with the news sized to the mobile’s screen. There is apparently iChannel that does this for you for a fee, but the transmission charges would make it unfeasable, I fear.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by goo Research’s mobile group on what sort of mobile phone people had. This mobile survey is slightly different from the usual style – this is sent directly to the mobile phones of members of their monitor group, and is called a “real time” survey. This was their sixteenth mobile users’ survey (but the first I’ve translated, I think), and this time they received 1,086 successfully completed questionnaires. 56.5% of the respondents were female, 3.8% in their teens, 30.8% in their twenties, 41.0% in their thirties, 20.6% in their forties, and 3.8% aged fifty or older.

This survey is quite an incomplete one, so apologies in advance for the lack of full information for some of the questions. I should register with them so I can get the full data, although I do worry about infringing copyright if I republish data obtained via a semi-private site, even if it is free to access.
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japan.internet.com published the results of a survey carried out in the middle of September by JR Tokai Express Research into how people back up data at home. They interviewed 330 people employed in private or public enterprises; 82.4% were male, 13.0% in their twenties, 43.0% in their thirties, 27.0% in their forties, 14.5% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

I, like almost half in this survey, back up my important stuff (mostly photos) to CD-R on a semi-regular basis. Actually, last month I almost had a back up muck-up when wifey’s install of Outlook Express suddenly lost all its address book after she tried to add a new address and I had been rather remiss about backing it up recently. It turned out, however, to be a bug in a recent Microsoft security update, which fortunately is easily resolved by following the procedure described in the linked Knowledge Base article.
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Last month goo Ranking published three surveys regarding digital cameras; what would you first shoot with a new digital camera, what is the most important point when selecting a digital camera, and finally what colour would you want the digital camera body to be.

As always, these rankings should be taken with a pinch of salt due to the lack of demographics and the open nature of the poll. Remember that the score listed is the percentage of votes for each choice relative to the top choice.
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japan.internet.com published the results of goo Research’s 27th regular monthly survey into mobile phone upgrade needs. Over four days towards the end of August 1,000 mobile phone owners from their monitor group successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 55.3% of the group was female, 2.3% in their teens, 20.7% in their twenties, 42.0% in their thirties, 23.3% in their forties, and 11.7% aged fifty or more. I believe people were asked about their own personal phone rather than company equipment.

The almost zero interest in foreign phones (if we discount Sony-Ericsson) is both quite surprising and rather predictable to me. The design aesthetic of Western phones is quite different to the Japanese; fat stubby bricks versus thin rounded clamshells, to attempt to sum up the differences in a single phrase. Samsung is Korean, however, as might Pantech be (I’ve never heard of them before!), but I wonder if their non-existent sales is related more to poor model appeal rather than to nationalistic sympathies. Japanese phones do really poorly overseas (discounting Sony-Ericsson again) so perhaps the reasons are similar for both imports and exports?
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into issues regarding television, including the upcoming switch-over to digital terrestrial broadcasting. They interviewed by means of a private internet-based questionnaire 330 members of their monitor panel; 59.7% were male, 20.3% in their twenties, 33.0% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 14.5% in their fifties, and 4.8% in their sixties.

For my readers who might not have heard the news, on July 24th, 2011, all analogue terrestrial television broadcasting will be switched off. Most of the main population centres are already covered by digital broadcasting, and most of the new televisions either come with decoders built-in, or have ports (isn’t it a D-4) that allow a separate decoder box to be attached and full high-vision enjoyed, I believe. However, I cannot find any English site that describes what box might be necessary, and the main Japanese site, sponsored, I believe, by most of the major electrical manufacturers, seems keener to persuade you that you need a whole new television rather than just a wee box of tricks. If anyone knows of a clear English explanation of the whole affair, please let me know and I’ll add a link.
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goo Research recently published a massive survey of 35,925 internet users by means of a public internet-based questionnaire on the use of railway IC cards. They collected replies during a week at the end of June and the start of July. 53.3% of the respondents were female, 2.3% in their teens, 22.3% in their twenties, 39.6% in their thirties, 24.0% in their forties, 8.7% in their fifties, 2.3% in their sixties, 0.6% in their seventies, and the remaining 0.2% chose not to reveal their age. Also, 30.6% of the sample lived in the Tokyo area, 7.4% in the Nagoya area, and 16.6% in Kansai – Tokyo and Kansai have railway smart card services (namely JR’s SUICA in Tokyo and JR’s ICOCA and the private railways’ PiTaPa in Kansai) and major train concentrations, but I don’t believe Nagoya has, although it is the third major centre of population in Japan. According to the survey, though, there is plans to launch a JR TOICA card for the Nagoya area.

For those of you not familiar with their operation, here is a quick history of the cards in the Kansai area. First, JR launched the ICOCA card with two key features; one, a pre-paid season ticket and two, electronic cash, whereby money could be added manually then used either for shopping around the station or to use instead of train tickets for travel outside the season ticket’s area. A couple of years later the private railways launched the PiTaPa system, which had a quite different payment model. First, there was no season ticket, but instead between two nominated stations you got a 5% discount for each journey in your first month, rising to 15% for the third, if I remember correctly. These fares were post-pay; at the end of each month all your travel was added up and automatically withdrawn from a nominated account. For purchases other than train fares, there was also a standard electronic wallet system as for ICOCA. In addition, if you chose a credit card version of your PiTaPa card, when your available cash fell below a certain point, the card could be set to automatically recharge itself as you passed through the ticket gates. Note that although there are about seven or eight transport companies that support PiTaPa, when using another company’s transport your fares come from the electronic cash portion, and no discounts are available. This makes it a major pain for people like me who use two private railways and JR to get to work, as I would need to carry three separate cards, probably in three separate wallets to avoid interference, to get full benefit from the discounts.

In the meantime, JR announced their Smart ICOCA, which was an ICOCA card and credit card combined, with the similar auto top-up feature. In addition, ICOCA and PiTaPa got together and now allow the electronic cash to be used at each other’s ticket gates. Finally, Hankyu have just started a pre-pay system for season tickets (just like the original ICOCA), so holders of their Hana Plus PiTaPa-compatible credit cards can add a season ticket to their card, for people who’d rather manage their commuting fares that way round.

I almost forgot – the latest DoCoMo FOMA mobile phones also support some aspects of railway IC cards’ electronic cash system, but I’m not really sure of the exact capabilities.

Note also that the Tokyo JR SUICA cards can be used in the Kansai ICOCA area and vice versa. I’m not sure whether or not SUICA and PiTaPa interact, though.
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japan.internet.com released the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research conducted on the first of August into opinions on Smartphones. They interviewed 331 members of their monitor group, 58.3% male, by means of a private internet survey. 13.9% were in their twenties, 36.3% in their thirties, 29.3% in their forties, 13.0% in their fifties, and 7.6% in their sixties. Note that JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor group seems to have a disproportionately high number of business people, so the results should be read in that light, so the knowledge and usage of Smartphones and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) is probably higher than in a truely random sample.

Despite, or more likely because, standard phones in Japan having very high specification level, the market for Smartphones seems very limited. There have been a few models released, but they have a niche market and are rarely promoted in the high street shops. I’m surprised a full QWERTY keyboard came so low in the ranking, but perhaps people were imagining that only pinkie-sized could be squeezed into a mobile. However, I still have fond memories of my Psion Series 5 (I lost it in Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam) and its amazing mini keyboard. Something like that with BlueTooth support for a voice headset would be wonderful. Anyone know where to buy a second-hand Psion in Japan?
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey by JR Tokai Express Research on mobile phones and memory cards. The results presented in the story were in fact extracted from fuller research in JR Tokai Express Research’s 26th regular survey on mobile phone upgrading requirements. 330 people completed their private internet questionnaire; 69.7% of the sample was male, 10.6% in their twenties, 37.6% in their thirties, 33.3% in their forties, 13.0% in their fifties, and 5.5% in their sixties.

With phone cameras now up to 2 megapixels or more, and music download and playback features becoming commonplace, users of both these features may require somewhere to offload the data. I don’t know about the latest music phones, but many of the previous models with memory card slots came with a 16Mb card included. This should be used as a baseline when looking at Q2. Also, the current market price for a 128MB mini-SD card (the most-used format) is about 2,500 yen.
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