世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com, in conjuction with Cross Marketing, performed a survey regarding Operating Systems for their home PC. They surveyed 150 men and 150 women who own computers at home via an internet-based questionnaire. The age demographics were equally split with 16.6% in their teens (actually only 18 and 19 year olds), twenties, thirties, and so on up to 16.6% in their sixties. It is not stated whether each age band was split equally between male and female.

I’m surprised to see that 12.0% of users are still limping along with one of Microsoft’s 16 bit operating system. Whether the one single Linux user reflects the demographics of Cross Marketing’s monitor pool or whether that is a true reflection of Linux in the Japanese home market, I do not know.

Although my headline says few Japanese may buy an Intel Mac, the 14.3% who responded with varying degrees of positivety represents almost four times as many people as the current Mac OS user base, suggesting that the figures are much more positive than at first glance.
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At the end of April, japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked into the usage of Social Bookmarking Services. They interviewed 1,069 people by means of an internet-based questionnaire. 43.2% of the sample was male, and the age breakdown was 2.6% in their teens, 21.6% in their twenties, 43.1% in their thirties, 24.4% in their forties, and 8.2% in their fifties.

I’ve used del.icio.us myself, but more as an attempted tool of promotion than as some sort of social affair. I get a very small amount of traffic (and in just one or two hits a day) from there and other services like furl and Technorati, although I do have a plan underway to get my own local tagging service up and running, perhaps this weekend.

Note that comparing figures with a survey last month on the state of RSS reader usage, although nearly four times as many people use RSS readers compared to social bookmarking services, round about a third of those interviewed in both surveys expressed a wish to use them in the future.
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infoPLANT recently carried out a survey into how people used their DoCoMo mobile phone’s default screen display. Over a week at the start of April they interviewed 6,358 people, 65.8% of them female, by means of a self-selecting survey from the iMode main menu.

Note that on the newer models of phones, not just a static wallpaper may be used, but also animations or applets may be set to run on the default display. The Japanese word 待ち受け画面, machiuke gamen is used to describe the wallpaper feature that this survey is concerned with. It refers to the display that appears after the phone has been idle for a few seconds, or perhaps when the phone is woken from sleep mode but before going to menu mode.

My own phone usually has seasonal Pinky pictures with calendar overlay.
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MyVoice surveyed their monitor community at the start of April this year to find out what they thought about detox. 15,145 members responded to the internet-based questionnaire; 46% of them were male, and 4% were in their teens, 22% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 11% in their fifties.

The Japanese do seem to love their fad diets and other general health quackery. Germanium sticky pads do seem rather popular these days, replacing the rotating magnet as the most useless product heavily promoted on TV, although these neckbands of titanium are still heavily touted, and I saw an ad at the weekend suggesting that germanium ones are going to be big. I expect the Japan World Cup team to be sporting some of these wastes of cash in Germany next month.
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Continuing the recent series of looking at various habits, this time NEPRO JAPAN weighed in with a survey titled “The ease of use of mobile phones”, although the survey looks more at usage habits. They surveyed 4,206 people by means of a public questionnaire available through the iMode, Vodafone live! and EZweb mobile phone sites, for just under a day over the 10th and 11th of April. The self-selecting demographics were 60% female, 3% in their teens, 38% in their twenties, 42% in their thirties, and 17% forty or older. Although this may seem a youth-biased group, the young user is the core demographic they are targetting.

It’s interesting in Q5 that almost half the respondents want to try out a Panasonic phone, versus two in five for Sharp; sales figures suggest that Sharp are the top sellers of phones, but I believe this is because Sharp also sell Vodafone and au-branded phones whereas Panasonic are exclusively DoCoMo.
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Before I start, let me say that all astrology is bunk. However, it is in Japan, like everywhere else, big business with frauds highly-talented (at extracting money from gullible individuals) people like Guinness Book of Records best-selling author in her category, the awful Kazuko Hosoki, or the Feng Shui (pronounced to rhyme with “load of old hooie”) “Dr” Copa who will sell you cheap plastic yellow tat guaranteed to increase his your wealth. Oooh, and don’t get me started on blood types!

PopShops™ affiliate stores

There, I feel better now. infoPLANT recently had an open survey available for one week through an iMode menu on the topic of fortunes. As with all the other infoPLANT surveys, the self-selecting nature of it will bias the sample towards heavy iMode users. Over one week in the middle of March, 6,031 people, 32.9% male, completed the mobile web-based questionnaire. I will use the term “horoscope” in this translation to cover all the various types of fortune-telling that the Japanese word 占い, uranai, covers.
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At the end of April, japan.internet.com, in conjuction with goo Research, published the results of a survey into how much people trust various internet sources. This survey comes hot on the heels of an astonishing (to me) poll that discovered well over 90% of Wikipedia users trusted the contents to some degree. Here they interviewed 1,012 members of the goo Research monitor group via a private internet poll. The demographics were 57.6% female, 3.3% were teenagers, 24.7% were in their twenties, 40.4% were in their thirties, 24.0% in their forties, and 7.6% in their fifties.

I am suprised at just two in five saying that they have encountered false data on the internet! I also find it surprising that a relatively high number trust shopping sites over Q&A sites; my gut reaction would be the other way round, especially as the Q&A sites that I am aware of seem to have an active community that corrects any errors before they get propagated. In addition, considering the popularity of auction sites, under 5% trusting them seems to run counter to expectations.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with goo Research, recently investigated the use of Social Networking Services, or SNS, in Japan. 1,087 members of the goo Research Monitors took part in the internet-based survey. 56.3% of the sample was female; 2.4% were in their teens, 22.9% in their twenties, 39.9% in their thirties, 24.8% in their forties, and 10.0% in their fifties. It may be instructive to compare the results here with those from an earlier survey of SNS that I translated in December.

総務省, soumushou, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, recently released figures that stated there were 7.16 million registered users of SNS (I’m not sure if people registered for two services are counted twice) at the end of March 2006; in the six months from September of 2005 the number of has increased by almost 80%! As well as users increasing, so are the services; in February Yahoo! opened up the beta version of Yahoo 360° and in March Rakuten introduced Rakuten Plaza Links.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, looked at the use of affiliate schemes by bloggers and web page maintainers. They surveyed 330 people employed in public or private businesses; 86.1% of the sample was male, 10.6% were in their twenties, 33.3% in their thirties, 38.2% in their forties, 15.2% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties. Note that perhaps people who are ranking in vast sums of money from blogging wouldn’t be wasting their time filling in surveys for the chance of a few yen off a Green Car seat!

The survey did not mention how “affiliate” was defined; obviously sponsored links like with Amazon Associates would fall under this category, but as to whether AdSense (click that button on the left to find out more!) is also included, this survey does not clarify. Just for the sake of disclosure, at the rate I’m going at, my target for the year is in the 5,000 to 10,000 yen range (yes, just one hundred bucks!) although I had a bumper month last month where I managed to raise more than my hosting fee!
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with Cross Marketing, recently investigated mobile phone privacy. They sampled 150 men and 150 women, 16.6% aged 18 or 19, 16.6% in their twenties, and so on up to 16.6% in their sixties.

Note that over three times as many people take their mobiles into public toilets than into their toilet at home. I wonder what is hidden behind that statistic! Im also rather surprised to see that less than a third of all user employ any security locks on their phone; note almost all phones have lock features what require a four digit code to open them. Some of the more advanced phones go as far as having a fingerprint reader that may be used to unlock the device.
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