世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com reported on goo Research’s second regular survey into SNS (Social Networking Service) usage.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 23rd of May 2013 1,062 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.7% of the sample were male, 13.9% in their teens, 15.9% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.7% in their forties, and 31.9% aged fifty or older.

My primary access is from a computer too, although my smartphone usage is catching up.
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A recent survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into text-based communication revealed carrier email ruled for mobile users, but SMS was also unexpectedly popular.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 10th of May 2013 1,073 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a mobile phone (including smartphone) based survey. 54.1% of the sample were female, 2.1% in their teens, 18.6% in their twenties, 38.3% in their thirties, 27.8% in their forties, and 13.1% aged fifty or older.

Quite frankly, I find the mobile carrier SMS figure very difficult to believe, especially as there is no such thing as free texts plans, and they cost 3.5 yen each on docomo at least, and all phones come with carrier email that is usually free and supports much longer messages than SMS. Perhaps many people think that sending an email to another mobile user is SMS? However, talking to a friend, he suggested that emoji on the iPhone are much easier to use in SMS than in email, and also LINE (pictured above) encourages people to use phone numbers, not email addresses.

I use pretty much everything listed here, except for SMS and SNS. I use Google Hangouts for social chat, which I suppose counts as a voice call service, especially now it has become a standalone app rather than the old Messenger that was grafted on to Google Plus.
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A survey looking at actual smartphone usage was recently published by PR Times and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Over the 25th and 26th of March 2013 520 smartphone users completed an internet-based survey. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, and 20:20:20:20:20 people in the age bands teens, twenties, thirties, forties and fifties.

As I am not on an unlimited packet deal, I mostly just game on my smartphone, with the occasional SNS access when I am in a station with Wi-Fi!
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey by goo Research into electronic book purchasing sites, although the column chose to highlight free e-book sites.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 10th of April 2013 1,076 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionniare. 53.2% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

A long time ago I downloaded and read two books from Aozora, and I’ve also recently downloaded a couple from Google Books, but I am yet to read them.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by Dentsu Innovation Institute into selling over-the-counter medicines on the internet. The full report is available as a PDF here.

Demographics

During March 2013 2,000 people were chosen by unspecified means to answer a PC internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 50:50 male and female, and each age band from twenties to sixties contained 200 males and 200 females.

A recent Japan Times editorial explained the situation in more detail; basically there are three categories of non-presecription drugs. The first category is for drugs that can only be sold in pharmacies, and the second and third in pharmacies or other stores with a registered sales assistant, who is obliged to provide information regarding side-effects, etc. As can be seen in Q2, the categories are very, very broad.
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A recent survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, looked at web site viewing, the seventh time this regular survey has been performed, and found that tablets were surprisingly (to me at least) less popular than feature phones when it came to selecting a main surfing device.

Demographics

Between the 9th and 11th of April 2013 1,090 mobile phone- (including smartphone-) using members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.6% of the sample were female, 3.1% in their teens, 23.1% in their twenties, 37.1% in their thirties, 25.5% in their forties, and 11.2% aged fifty or older.

I’m beginning to seriously consider using a tablet as my main tool for home, replacing my netbook, although I do need to find a decent text editor with macros in order to produce all the tables I use. If anyone has any good recommendations, I’m all ears. And no, Emacs for Android is most certainly not a good recommendation!

In Q1SQ1, I’d like to know more about why about half the smartphone users choose it as their primary surfing device, but only one in five tablet users do so. I suspect it is something to do with the smartphone being more portable thus usable on the train when commuting, and perhaps a lot of tablets are wifi only, so have less connectivity.
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If you’ve been following the Japanese news you may have heard that a Japanese court ordered Google to remove a libellous auto-complete, a ruling that it may or may not follow. So, to see what the average member of their monitor group thought of the ruling, Research Panel conducted a quick poll. 17,905 people responded to the question “In the light of the recent defamation case, do you think Google should withdraw their auto-complete feature?” 25.4% thought Google should, 22.3% thought they shouldn’t, and perhaps reflecting the large amount of Yahoo! search users, 52.2% didn’t know about Google’s auto-complete.

As seen above, I think I’ll sue Google for associating my site with MLP, or My Little Pony…

This recent short report from japan.internet.com on a survey by goo Research into IT device security, the second time they have conducted this survey, the first being in November 2012.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 12th of March 2012 1,033 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were male, 16.4% in their teens, 17.9% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 27.9% aged fifty or older.

Here’s a scam virus advert on a tablet:

I seem to remember translating the previous survey, but I cannot find it on the site. Perhaps I got half-way through and decided it wasn’t interesting enough to be published?

Anyway, I’m curious why tablet security is increasing but smartphone staying static. One factor in the tablet rise is no doubt due to Android increasing market share, and curiously enough if all the extra 36 tablet owners in Q1SQ were non-iOS users, and all of them used security software, then the rise from 42.1% to 55.2% is explained, but I’m sure that’s just a numerical fluke.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on an interesting survey conducted by Nifty, comnico and Lifemedia into social media usage, focusing on young soon-to-graduate students.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 11th of March 2013 559 social media-using people who were due to graduate at the end of this academic year and were aged between 20 and 26 completed an internet survey, but it was not reported how the sample was gathered. 62.1% of the sample were female, and 37.9% male.

Coincidentally, my new group leader today introduced himself, including his Facebook page, and suggested that people interested should befriend him, so I shall do that and see what happens…
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey by Video Research Ltd. into characters and the child market. More detailed information was also obtained from Video Research’s own press release.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 9th of December 2012 617 female members of the Video Research monitor group who lived with a child aged between 3 and 12 years old, and who lived within a 30 km radius of Tokyo station.

It’s an interesting set of results, and I wonder how the one in three or so children (in this sample of internet-using parents) who view or download music and video will approach copyright when they grow up? Will media be something to be valued or just another basic human need that they expect to have on tap all the time? How will they consume television? Will they even consume television?
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