世論 What Japan Thinks

[part 1][part 2][part 3][part 4]

Macromill Research recently published the results of a massive yet fascinating study into smartphones, looking at both smartphone users and those wanting to buy. This will be published in four parts.

Demographics

Over the 17th and 18th of February 2011 412 smartphone owning and 206 non-smartphone owning but thinking of buying members of the Macromill monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The 412 smartphone users were split into 290 male and 122 female, 73 in their twenties, 169 in their thirties, 111 in their forties, and 59 aged fifty or older. Furthermore, 209 owned an iPhone, 159 Android-based phones, and the remaining 44 had other OSes or didn’t know. Of the 206 non-smartphone users, 113 were male and 93 female, but their ages were not listed.

Q21 is interesting; the difference between the number of free apps for iPhone versus Android can perhaps partially be explained by the iPhone having been on the market longer, but the paid-for difference is due to people already having their credit card details in iTunes, so the barrier to paying is much lower than that for Android. Furthermore, Apple do not go out of their way to promote free applications, whereas Android users can find plenty of free applications from alternative stores, some of which might even be virus-free.
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[part 1][part 2][part 3][part 4]

Macromill Research recently published the results of a massive yet fascinating study into smartphones, looking at both smartphone users and those wanting to buy. This will be published in four parts.

Demographics

Over the 17th and 18th of February 2011 412 smartphone owning and 206 non-smartphone owning but thinking of buying members of the Macromill monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The 412 smartphone users were split into 290 male and 122 female, 73 in their twenties, 169 in their thirties, 111 in their forties, and 59 aged fifty or older. Furthermore, 209 owned an iPhone, 159 Android-based phones, and the remaining 44 had other OSes or didn’t know. Of the 206 non-smartphone users, 113 were male and 93 female, but their ages were not listed.

In Q14, it’s interesting that over a quarter are tweeting more since getting their smartphone, although it might be a side-effect of the general expansion of Twitter in Japan rather than specifically smartphone-related, as there is a very usable interface for Twitter available for use by most feature phones too.

In Q17, naturally the iPhone comes tops, but the Toshiba Regza being second and fourth (different versions for different carriers) is a bit of a surprise as there is very little advertising that I have seen for it. What is even more interesting is that if you add together Toshiba’s and Samsung’s Galaxy family they beat out the iPhone4, although if you add in the iPhone 3GS Apple is probably second. Also note that Sharp’s Galapagos series are actually Android phones, but as they have customised the OS for their ebook readers, according to Google’s guidelines, they cannot call their phones Android phones.

You’ll also note that Panasonic is conspicuous by its absence, due to them not being due to release a smartphone until Autumn.
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[part 1][part 2][part 3][part 4]

Macromill Research recently published the results of a massive yet fascinating study into smartphones, looking at both smartphone users and those wanting to buy. This will be published in four parts.

Demographics

Over the 17th and 18th of February 2011 412 smartphone owning and 206 non-smartphone owning but thinking of buying members of the Macromill monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The 412 smartphone users were split into 290 male and 122 female, 73 in their twenties, 169 in their thirties, 111 in their forties, and 59 aged fifty or older. Furthermore, 209 owned an iPhone, 159 Android-based phones, and the remaining 44 had other OSes or didn’t know. Of the 206 non-smartphone users, 113 were male and 93 female, but their ages were not listed.

I think the most interesting results are from the dissatisfied iPhone users in Q9B. Battery life is of course the top complaint of all smartphone users, but next is the reception. This is not the infamous Grip of Death (well, that might be an aspect), but rather that SoftBank have the worst reception area of the top three providers. No Flash support comes next, not surprisingly, then the two Japan-specific complaints of a lack of infrared and electronic cash support. I can understand the electronic cash issue, but what are people wanting to do with infrared, or is it just that it is missing from the tick list of standard features?
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[part 1][part 2][part 3][part 4]

Macromill Research recently published the results of a massive yet fascinating study into smartphones, looking at both smartphone users and those wanting to buy. This will be published in four parts.

Demographics

Over the 17th and 18th of February 2011 412 smartphone owning and 206 non-smartphone owning but thinking of buying members of the Macromill monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The 412 smartphone users were split into 290 male and 122 female, 73 in their twenties, 169 in their thirties, 111 in their forties, and 59 aged fifty or older. Furthermore, 209 owned an iPhone, 159 Android-based phones, and the remaining 44 had other OSes or didn’t know. Of the 206 non-smartphone users, 113 were male and 93 female, but their ages were not listed.

I am in the second demographic, but the unlimited data packet plan price puts me off. If I were to buy right now, I’d probably go for the cheapest smartphone at the moment, the LG Optimus Chat with the slide-out keyboard, although I suspect the low-spec screen would annoy me! Secondly, a slightly higher-resolution Samsung Galaxy Tab might do the business, if it meant I could ditch the notebook.
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A recent survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into mobile phones but focusing on camera features in this report, found that cameras were now ubiquitous on mobile phones.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 18th of February 2011 1,074 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.7% in their teens, 17.9% in their twenties, 21.1% in their thirties, 16.6% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 12.2% aged sixty or older.

Currently the makers are fighting a megapixel war in Japan, in both traditional feature phones and smartphones. For feature phones, Panasonic have their 13 megapixel Lumix phone, LG their ugly as sin jobby-brown 12 megapixel effort, and Sony-Ericsson the stupidly over-specced 16 megapixels; for smartphones, Toshiba’s Android-based 12 megapixel camera.
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Well, at least according to the latest survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, their 18th survey into digital terrestrial television broadcasts.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 17th of February 2011 1,089 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 15.8% in their forties, 16.3% in their fifties, and 11.9% aged sixty or older.

I’d be a bit wary of the figures being representative of the whole population, as the survey is for people who have home computers; I hear that a lot of retired people are still not ready yet, and considering that there has been very little advertising for set-top boxes versus a whole new television, I’m sure there’s a lot who don’t know what to do. Personally, I think the government should give out vouchers for set-top boxes with pension payments; this can be paid for by getting rid of the “digital ambassadors” they have – six high-end stars who I’m pretty sure are getting sufficiently fat wads for their appearances.

By the way, the switch-off date is 24th of July 2011!
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According to Japan’s biggest comparison shopping site, kakaku.com, battery life is the one point where most smartphones fail badly. To try to quantify this, goo Research conducted a survey, reported on by japan.internet.com, into smartphone batteries.

Demographics

Between the 2nd and 7th of February 2011 1,081 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.4% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.4% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

I was completely dissatisfied with my old mobile phone’s battery, but after recently trading up to another standard feature phone I’m more than impressed by the one week recharge cycle, involving much email, less than a minute of calls, and a little bit of surfing here and there.
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This latest set of results from the eighth regular survey into mobile devices looked in particular at smartphones, but also exanded on a wish I had, breaking out numbers for the iPod touch and iPad.

Demographics

Between the 24th and 27th of January 2011 1,069 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 15.9% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, and 28.4% aged fifty or older.

Note that in Q1SQ1 GALAPAGOS is Sharp’s brand name for their Android-based handsets (and electronic book readers), although some of their Android devices for au are branded with the IS series mark.
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The results of the 54th regular survey by goo Research into mobile phone upgrade needs was recently reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 19th of January 2011 exactly 1,000 mobile phone-owning members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 1.3% in their teens, 13.3% in their twenties, 30.7% in their thirties, 30.1% in their forties, and 24.6% aged fifty or older.

The abbreviations in the headline refer to the top five entries for Q3. With smartphones due to overtake feature phones very soon in terms of new sales in Japan (I hear the figure of currently two in five new phones being smartphones), and with the local makers now bringing out their smartphones with four of these top five features (I’m not aware of a water-resistant smartphone), the iPhone’s dominance in the Japanese market is sure to come to an end.

In lieu of a graph, let’s have a dog in school uniform instead:

Which reminds me, Lee at Tokyo Times found a much better pair of dogs in school uniforms.
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The seventh regular survey into consumer games machines by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com also revealed that Nintendo’s machines are still the most popular in Japan.

Demographics

Between the 6th and 8th of January 2011 1,093 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16/3% in their forties, and 27.5% aged fifty or older.

As there’s nothing I can graph in this survey, instead here’s the first match on YouTube for Nintendo:

The survey also noted that in the US the various Nintendo DSs had sold about 47 million, and the Wii around 34 million.

I’ve not seen the Nintendo 3DS in real life, but the Sharp LYNX mobile phone uses similar technology to do its 3D, and it does work rather well, although I’m not sure how trying to use 3D in a moving train will be, although I suspect that at least I would get motion sickness from it; One Seg television is enough eye (and stomach) strain for me.
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