世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently reported on the ninth regular survey by goo Research into consumer games machines.

Demographics

Over the 14th and 15th of July 2011 1,087 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.4% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 15.7% in their forties, and 28.2% aged fifty or older.

I’ve not really heard anything about the PlayStation Vita, but the Wii U looks interesting, although I probably won’t buy it myself.
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With Panasonic in particular chasing the female market with their P-07C Android smartphone, iShare took a look at the basics of how women choose smartphones.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 16th of June 2011 968 female members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 10.8% of the sample were in their twenties, 45.1% in their thirties, and 44.0% in their forties.

The second half of the survey concentrated mostly on smartphone users. I’m not really suprised that in Q10SQ Bluetooth is the most frequently unused feature, but I am surprised that music playing is. Perhaps worries about battery life outweigh the desire to use the feature?
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[part 1] [part 2]

With Panasonic in particular chasing the female market with their P-07C Android smartphone, iShare took a look at the basics of how women choose smartphones.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 16th of June 2011 968 female members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 10.8% of the sample were in their twenties, 45.1% in their thirties, and 44.0% in their forties.

As noted below, almost everyone I see, both male and female, has a case for their smartphone. Given that the most popular style of feature phone is the clamshell, perhaps people are not in the habit of carefully stowing phones away from keys and other sources of scratches?
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japan.internet.com reported on a recent survey from goo Research into domestic appliances, their 9th regular survey on this topic.

Demographics

Between the 26th of May and the 1st of June 2011 1,073 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.2% in their teens, 18.5% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 15.8% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

I recently bought a boring old Sanyo hoover, although the wife was interested in a Roomba, mostly for its pinkness.

And this seems like a good excuse for this video:

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Despite the iPhone having an almost 18 month head start on Android, according to this survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into mobile devices (the 9th time this regular survey has been conducted) Android and Android-derived OS users now equal iPhone users.

Demographics

Between the 25th and 28th of April 2011 1,080 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample were male, 15.8% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.8% in their thirties, 16.4% in their forties, and 27.9% aged fifty or older.

I have another marketplace-based survey that I will translate later that shows that Android is outselling iPhone, which of course is implied by the results of this survey.

Note that until last autumn about the only Android devices available were lower-end HTC devices and a couple of local attempts, all of which were very poor compared to the iPhone, and hopeless when compared to the Japanese standard feature phone. However, now every Japanese manufacturer is now in the game, and the features that Japanese consumers expect, namely One Seg digital television, Osaifu Keitai electronic cash and deco-mail (HTML mail) are available. Furthermore, the iPhone is only available from SoftBank, which has just 20% of the handset market, whereas SoftBank plus the other two big players, docomo and au, have huge numbers of Android-based phones.

Just today, in fact, docomo announced their summer models, with 9 new smartphones, including Panasonic’s interesting (but very, very girlie) interface that supports one-handed operation, an essential feature for train riders.

Thumb interface:

OMG hearts:

Girlie Twitter:

Finally, note that Galapagos is Sharp’s own customised Android version – they cannot use the Google trademarks due to the heavy customising they have done.
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The 55th regular survey into mobile phone upgrade needs by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com found out that a small majority of current standard feature phones would rather keep using them than upgrade to a smartphone; I would have thought that more would want to stay with feature phones.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 20th of April 2011 exactly 1,000 mobile phone-using members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were male, 1.4% in their teens, 12.8% in their twenties, 29.9% in their thirties, 30.8% in their forties. and 25.1% aged fifty or older.

Furthermore, the report highlights that according to a separate survey 49% of women in their twenties and seven-tenths in their teens want a smartphone, which perhaps suggests why Panasonic are this summer bringing out the P-07C My First Smartphone

Talking of SoftBank, here’s an English lesson from them:

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goo Research, as reported by japan.internet.com, took a look at home computer use, with the published report focusing on problems with them.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 25th of March 2011 1,083 members of the goo Research monitor group answered a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 17.6% in their twenties, 21.0% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 16.0% in their fifties, and 12.6% aged sixty or older.

I don’t think I’ve had any particular problem with my PC in the last year, although my wife always has problems with Internet Explorer being too slow as she has millions of bookmarks, and repeated running of Flash fills up the memory in no time.
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This time it is goo Research taking a look at an interesting facet of Japanese life, in this report by japan.internet.com into cabling and wiring.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 9th of March 2011 1,088 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.9% in their teens, 18.4% in their twenties, 21.2% in their thirties, 15.7% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

I haven’t a clue why over half the sample have modems; perhaps people are counting their ADSL adapters as both routers and modems? Only 45.0% having a PC monitor is a bit confusing, as another survey this month indicated that 58.5% had desktop computers – do the remaining 13.5% either have an all-in-one computer or are they feeding the output through their television?
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I promise tomorrow I will have an earthquake-related survey, but for today you’ll just have to make do with goo Research looking at faxes, as reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 8th of March 2011 1,010 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 17.8% in their teens, 17.7% in their twenties, 19.7% in their thirties, 13.8% in their forties, 16.9% in their fifties, and 13.1% aged sixty or older.

I also think faxes will survive; the transmission method might change from standard telephone to an internet-based protocol, but I don’t think the ability to be able to move a bit of paper from one location to another is going to go away, certainly not in the domestic sphere.
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Sitting around the house feeling miserable about the earthquake, tsunami and radiation leaks is not very productive, so I’ll try to get back into the swing of things with a survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into home appliances, their eighth in a regular series of such surveys.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 25th of February 2011 1,066 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were male, 16.0% in their teens, 18.4% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 11.9% aged sixty or older.

The question about a home bakery refers in part to the famous hit product from last year, Sanyo’s SPM-RB1000, or the GOPAN, a bread maker that uses rice, and will even mill the rice into flour before starting cooking. Panasonic’s range of conventional bread makers are supposed to be pretty good too.

Also note that I translated the third in the series last January and the seventh last November.
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