世論 What Japan Thinks

Despite SoftBank, WillCom and E-Mobile offering free voice calls to other customers of the same company (given certain conditions and/or payments), and au and docomo offering free calls amongst families, this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Point On Research into mobile phone voice calls shows not too much take-up of such offers.

Demographics

On the 18th of January 2009 1,000 mobile phone users from the Point On monitor group completed a private internet-based survey, although there is no information to say if they use mobile internet or computer-based. The sample was exactly 50.0% male, 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.

I very rarely make voice calls – even several times a month is too high a frequency for me. I only ever call my wife, and even though she can call me for free, we just use email as it’s far more practical especially since my commute is 90% inside a train.
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Following up on coffee shop chain images comes another survey from iShare, this time looking at cellphone carrier image.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 19th of December 2008 402 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.7% of the sample were male, 15.4% in their twenties, 45.0% in their thirties, 32.3% in their forties, and 7.2% in either their teens or aged fifty or older.

Given SoftBank’s image in the title, it does seem appropriate that they supply Mickey Mouse phones.

This rather fun survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, looked at mobile phones, with the focus of the article being phones and bedtime.

Demographics

Over the 18th and 19th of December 2008 1,082 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.2% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.2% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 16.0% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

Remember that a previous survey has shown that over two in five use their mobiles as alarm clocks, so that will affect where people put their mobile phones.

My phone sits on a desk in another room, but my wife’s on a desk out of reach in the bedroom as she does use it as an alarm clock.
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Welcome back to normal service from What Japan Thinks, and my apologies again for being offline for so long. We’ll start off the year with a survey connected with one of my most popular themes of 2008, a look with japan.internet.com at goo Research’s 42nd regular monthly survey on mobile upgrade needs, with a question on touch panels.

Demographics

Between the 16th and 19th of December 2008 exactly 1,000 mobile phone users from the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.0% of the sample were female, 2.1% in their teens, 18.4% in their twenties, 36.6% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, and 15.3% aged fifty or older.

The figure of 0.3% Apple users reflects about 300,000 people given the estimate of about 100 million contracts, but given that on one hand there is a lot of multiple phone ownership and on the other iPhone users may be more likely than average to be the sort of people to participate in online surveys, it’s difficult to extrapolate from the three iPhone owners in this survey.

Note that it’s not clearly stated in the survey, but looking at the wording of the questions in Japanese, there is a possibility that the survey was conducted via mobile phone internet, so the questions may actually apply to the phone currently being used to answer the questions.
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What a super excuse to promote my favourite purveyor of Japanese tat (and I mean that as a compliment!) through this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Point On Research into cellphone accessories.

Demographics

On the 11th of December 2008 exactly 1,000 cellphone-carrying members of the Point On Research monitor group (a footnote classified them as heavy users) completed a private (mobile?) internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% or the respondents were in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

Dangling off my cellphone right now are: Monokuro Boo cubic pig screen cleaner; four-leaf clover with bells on; Miffy’s teddy bear; and Kobe Airport Hello Kitty jet, which for me is quite few. However, next week I should be getting a new one, as if I buy an advance ticket for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince it comes with a free gift of a Hogwarts scarf strap. I’ve got a million and one freebie straps and the like; I wonder if I could sell them on eBay?

Although you’ve probably missed delivery of a fukubukuro for New Year, if you’ve started thinking about Valentine’s Day, Strapya will engrave you and your loved one’s name on an acrylic strap.
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Here’s an interesting (but a fuller version would be even more interesting) survey conducted by Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into taking work computers home.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 9th of December 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were male, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

At my place of work we have a number of interesting rules regarding taking computers out of the office. I take mine home almost every day, and of course since it is forbidden I never ever use it to prepare my blog entries nor have I installed no end of tools to assist in creation of said entries, even though by deleting the uninstall entries from the registry they can be hidden from the licence checking software. Or so I’ve been told, I of course do not know if that is true or not.
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A subject that pops up every so often is the matter of children and cellphone usage, this time conducted by MyVoice.

Demographics

Over the first five days of November 2008 14,671 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 34% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 19% aged fifty or older.

Pictured here is Willcom’s child cellphone from Bandai, the papipo!, with a Tamagochi theme to it. Perhaps it’s just me, but it does look awfully like a toilet seat when folded closed…

In Q3 it’s interesting that in child cellphones, docomo loses out to both au and SoftBank compared to the percentages for adult phone ownership.
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It’s time for another installment of the goo Research mobile phone upgrade needs survey, the 41st in the series of monthly looks at people’s upgrade plans. This time one question looks at the Autumn and Winter 2008 models, with all three major carriers having just released, or being in the process of releasing, new models.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 14th of November 2008 exactly 1,000 members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.2% of the sample were female, 1.1% in their teens. 18.9% in their twenties. 38.3% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, and 16.5% aged fifty or older.

In Q1 it is interesting to note that SoftBank is down a couple of percentage points compared to the average level reported, however this might just be a sampling blip for this survey.

I currently have no plans to upgrade, although on Sunday I might look at a shop I know that should be selling this summer’s models at knock-down prices as most of the new phones from docomo are minor cosmetic revisions of the summer phones; Panasonic has added a two-way keyboard to go from a P906i to a P01-A, Sharp an 8 megapixel camera differentiating their SH-01A from the SH906i, and NEC have a fancy ball joint on their N-01A.

I have my eye on the Sharp SH-04A smartphone, not out until February or March 2009, as I was tempted to jump ship to Willcom for their Sharp 03 earlier this year. However, I’ll have to wait and see how they price it, but I’m not terribly hopeful of getting a decent deal.
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I haven’t looked at Social Networking Services (SNS) for a while, so I was pleased to find this one to report, published on japan.internet.com and conducted by another newcomer to me, Point On Research, on mobile SNS.

Demographics

On the 16th of November 2008 exactly 1,000 mobile phone users completed a survey. It does not say whether or not the survey was conducted via mobile phone or computer-based internet, as a mobile phone base would imply a higher percentage of people on all-you-can-eat data plans, so these sort of people tend to be more active online. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, and 20:20:20:20:20 of people in their teens, twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties.

Note that although most people use a cut-down browser on their mobile phones, all the major PC-sites have tailored their interfaces to fit these restrictions. Having said that, most of the top sites in Q1 are mobile-only free game-centred SNSes.
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Although almost all mobile phones can connect to the internet, and although most, if not all, providers offer free contract maintenance pages accessible directly from one’s mobile, the traditional offline methods are still most used, according to this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com on mobile phone use.

Demographics

Between the 30th of October and the 2nd of November 2008 1,091 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.5% in their twenties, 21.8% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.6% aged sixty or older.

I’ve recently started using docomo’s my docomo site (no English version) for almost daily bill checking now, as I’m trying to find out if their pake-hodai double plan is actually cheaper for me, as I suspect it isn’t as I use barely 1,000 yen’s worth of packets, but as part of my basic plan I get 1,000 yen’s worth of free packets, so I think I’d have to double my usage to get my money’s worth. I’ll know at the end of the month.

I also used docomo’s billing plan diagnostic service, but it was a really unfriendly service and did not link directly to my own bill, so rather than it using my last six months-worth of data, for instance, I had to retype all the data, and because it was done as some sort of AJAX/Flash hack, the browser back button didn’t work so I couldn’t easily try out different scenarios. Checking it again today it won’t let me use Opera 9.6 even though it says only Opera 8.5 and below are not good enough, and it recommends the just far too buggy Internet Explorer 6.0 instead.
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