世論 What Japan Thinks

This rather a bit too short to be really useful report published on japan.internet.com regarding goo Research’s fourth regular electronic money survey revealed that the Osaifu Keitai feature in most phones go unused.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 23rd of October 2008 1,093 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed an internet-based questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample were male, 16.5% were in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, and 27.7% aged fifty or older.

Note that in Q2 Osaifu Keitai (literally Mobile Wallet) is a trademarked service of docomo, the main promoter of electronic cash, but now most phones from the three big operators come with the FeliCa chip inside, ready to work with most electronic cash providers.
Read the rest of this entry »

With everyone spending so long in trains every day, and there being only so much email you can write, mobile phone applets are an alternative diversion that almost all Japanese phones support. This recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com looked at this topic of mobile phone applets.

Demographics

Between the 16th and 20th of October 2008 1,076 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, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.8% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

When I get a new phone I tend to play the built-in applets to death, then get bored and give up, so I haven’t actually used any for over a year. Every time I see the ads I quite fancy signing up for Pakurosu, but since it is 315 yen per month, I always resist the temptation!
Read the rest of this entry »

Here comes the fortieth regular cellphone upgrade needs survey by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 6th and 10th of October 2008 exactly 1,000 cellphone users from the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.4% of the sample were male, 2.1% in their teens, 18.5% in their twenties, 34.1% in their thirties, 26.8% in their forties, and 18.5% aged fifty or older.

In Q4 one might be surprised by seeing that just 7.6% of people rate Flash support as important, but I wonder how much of this is due to lack of awareness rather than lack of interest? The newest docomo phones now have decome-anime (decoration mail animation), which is basically simple Flash authoring, inserting your own message into an animation, similar to features currently only available through online greeting cards.
Read the rest of this entry »

With One Seg terrestrial digital television now having crossed the 50% threshold in mobile phones (according to another survey; this one just doesn’t quite make it), with most One Seg mobile having recording facilities, and with many of the new hard disk video recorders having options to save contents to memory cards for replay on mobile phones, this recent survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into video on mobile phones looked at how these features are being used.

Demographics

Over the 2nd and 3rd of October 2008 300 mobile phone-owning members of the Marsh monitor group answered a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was evenly split 50:50 male and female, and 20:20:20:20:20 between those in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and sixty or over.

Yesterday evening I) watched One Seg for the first time, but even on a slow local train, my wife’s external aerial-free phone kept breaking up so the best we could manage was the subtitles! That probably goes some way to explaining why the numbers watching on the move are relatively low.
Read the rest of this entry »

A few months ago there was a couple of articles in the US press with suspect (or just poorly-reported) statistics on cellphone literature in Japan, but at the time I didn’t have any good data to refute the stories with. However, this weekend not one, but two surveys come along, one from goo Research and one from Marsh, both reported on by japan.internet.com, on this very topic of cellphone novels.

Demographics

For the goo Research sample, between the 22nd and 25th of September 2008 1,074 people from their online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 21.9% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 16.2% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

For the Marsh sample, on the 26th of September 2008 they interviewed 300 females from their monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 21.7% were in their twenties, 51.3% in their thirties, and 27.0% in their forties.

Very surprising for me is that goo Research’s mixed sample showed a higher percentage of readership than Marsh’s young female group, although the level of enjoyment was relatively similar for both groups. The reasons for this would be interesting to investigate.
Read the rest of this entry »

Another mobile phone technology nearing the 50% barrier is GPS, Global Positioning System, according to this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com looking into GPS. Two days ago we saw that contactless IC chip-based electronic money had passed the 50% mark, and another article I read today about One Seg digital terrestrial television for mobile devices had also passed this milestone. (The original Japanese source is here)

Demographics

Between the 16th to 23rd of September 2008 1,056 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 60.8% of the sample were male (7 or so points higher than usual, but no explanation is given why), 12.9% were in their teens, 20.7% in their twenties, 20.2% in their thirties, 22.1% in their forties, and 24.2% aged fifty or older.

I’ve never used a GPS in a portable device, but I couldn’t drive without my car navi system. I rented a Prius last month but whatever default settings they had were a bit wonky, wanting me to detour just a little too far just so I could stick to motorways. I did manage to confuse it for a bit by missing a motorway entrance and instead cruised along underneath where I should have been, but it did recover effortlessly, and I made all my destinations with the minimum of drama.

The latest revision of the Prius navigation and entertainment centre also automatically rips CDs to hard disk and labels them using the Gracenote database, but that’s another story entirely!
Read the rest of this entry »

With most phones now crammed full with the latest features, most manufacturers are putting more effort into the design aspect of their phones as the differentiating feature. To see how consumers perceive the look of their mobiles, MyVoice conducted a survey into mobile phone design.

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2008 15,502 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens,l 15% in their twenties, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% in their fifties.

The first phone that I felt was stunning in design terms was the Sharp Aquos with the rotating screen that could change from portrait for standard email use to landscape for One Seg television watching. That phone first came out on SoftBank, but it’s now offered by all three major carriers. To my overseas readers – have Sharp licenced that technology to any foreign manufacturers? I seem to remember hearing that Panasonic’s push-button opening for clamshells has been licenced overseas, but Panasonic seem to keep that feature to themselves as a differentiating factor for the domestic market.

In the graph, I kept Sony-Ericsson separate as some of their hardware is worldwide, some domestic only.
Read the rest of this entry »

The vast majority of Japanese phones use the 3G network, but is that enough for the average user? This survey from JR Tokai Express Research Inc (actually, japan.internet.com forgot to mention who conducted the survey, but looking at the sample size, age demographics and the high concentration of respondents from the Tokai area, it has to be from JR Tokai!) tried to find out with this survey on mobile phone speed.

Demographics

On the 9th of September 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.5% of the sample were male, 3.0% in their teens, 11.8% in their twenties, 31.7% in their thirties, 23.0% in thier forties, 15.4% in their fifties, 9.1% in their sixties, and 6.0% aged seventy or older.

I’m satisfied with my current mobile transmission speed, although the most I ever as from it is sending a 20 or 30 kilobyte photo attachment. Speed of operation, however, that’s a different matter altogether and something I do have strong opinions about!
Read the rest of this entry »

Regular readers will know that the most popular search engine in Japan is Yahoo!, with Google just a few percentage points behind, but what do people do at these sites? This recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com looking at web search tried to answer these questions.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 12th of September 2008 1,060 members of the goo Research monitor panel (the report actually says goo users, but I don’t know how accurate that is) completed an online survey. 51.9% of the sample were male, 11.6% in their teens, 22.2% in their twenties, 22.0% in their thirties, 19.0% in their forties, and 25.3% aged fifty or older.

Ego-searching is looking for your own name in the search engines. Not suprisingly, lots of relevant information turns up about me since I’ve got a unique double-barrel that I use online a bit. However, my full birth name turns up absolutely zero, which is not surprising as I don’t often use my middle name.
Read the rest of this entry »

Last time I looked at the iPhone I got a comment on me being a bit negative in my outlook, so this time in a survey by BlogCh looking at smartphones I promise to be more positive!

Demographics

Between the 27th and 29th of August 2008 801 members of the free email service CLUB BBQ who also had a mobile phone for private use completed an online survey. 54.2% of the sample were male, 17.5% in their twenties, 48.3% in their thirties, 29.0% in their forties, and 5.2% in their teens or aged fifty or older. Note that the CLUB BBQ demographics is more technologically aware than the average internet user.

I thought my next mobile phone might be just another bog-standard one, but I just recently read a bit about the HTC Touch (or the HT1100 as DoCoMo label it) and it gets a lot of good reviews and comes in at the same price as… but it doesn’t do emoji. Curses! However, the Willcom 03, one of the subjects of this review, can at least display them.

Indeed, looking at the Willcom 03 feature set it looks like it is what the iPhone should have been for the Japan market. Oops, I’m being negative again, but for the sake of research I stopped at a mobile phone shop and picked up the Willcom 03 leaflet. It’s very feminine, telling the story of a week in the life of a young businesswoman in suitable pastel colours, and for just 6,700 yen all-in for unlimited data and zero money down (I think), it’s a winner.

Incidentally, I’ve not seen an iPhone in the wild yet, and I’ve seen just one or two iPod touches
Read the rest of this entry »