世論 What Japan Thinks

I have tried a few times listening to the radio in Japan, but I have never found it a rewarding experience. However, this recent survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into this topic found that just overhalf the population were listeners.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 26th of February 2011 1,097 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.0% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 11.9% aged sixty or older.

I’ve not tried internet radio; I left the UK just before it really took off, so never got into the habit of listening to it. Back at home I always woke up to serious breakfast news radio (I never really enjoyed music radio), but now nothing more than an alarm clock gets me up in the morning, and over breakfast the television is easier.
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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.

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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With the Nintendo 3DS having just gone on sale in Japan featuring a Game Boy Store to get your retro-gaming hit, this seems a very appropriate time to look at a ranking survey from goo Ranking into what games people would like to see available in said store.

Demographics

Over the 20th and 21st of December 2010 1,128 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 65.4% of the sample were female, 11.9% in their teens, 17.2% in their twenties, 30.2% in their thirties, 23.2% in their forties, 10.0% in their fifties, and 7.4% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

I hope the translations of the titles are OK – about a third of them seemed to be Japan-only releases, but a search with Google should help you out with the details.

Never having owned a Game Boy, I cannot offer my own suggestions!
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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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iShare recently took a look at drivers’ first road accident, and found that almost half of all license holders are still to have their first.

Demographics

Between the 24th and 28th of February 2011 641 members of the CLUB BQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.9% of the sample were male, 28.4% in their twenties, 32.6% in their thirties, and 39.0% in their forties.

The figure of almost half the drivers having never had an accident may be high in part due to a lot of “paper drivers”, the name for people with driving licenses but who never actually drive. Although I got a parking ticket last year I’ve never had an accident in my time in Japan, but that’s mainly due to only driving about four or five times a year! Back in the UK my first accident was scraping the side of the car against a post as I was parking, a feat I repeated a mere month later.
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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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A couple of weeks ago I published a translation of a survey into Toho Cinema’s proposed 300 yen cut to a standard admission ticket, but since then I came across a Japanese-language article telling me why it is a portent of things to come.

First, the article listed historical prices for cinema tickets, calling it cartel pricing. However, there was no adjustment for inflation, but I found a site with historical CPI data, so I’ll use January 2011 as a base.

I think that table is saying that the correction to 1,500 yen makes prices cheaper than what they were in 1970. If the price remains at 1,800 yen, the 1970 price adjusted for inflation is 576 yen, which means that current prices are within 4% of what they were in 1970 allowing for CPI; this actually destroys the author’s argument about how prices have risen drastically since 1970. However, let’s move onto the other points.

Currently, although 1,800 yen is the standard price, one day a week is Ladies’ Day, where women get in for 1,000 yen. Furthermore, over 60s get in for the same discounted price, but Toho Cinemas are talking about getting rid of Ladies’ Day and limiting the OAP discount to the over 65s. The reason for this is that at the moment over 60% of tickets sold are at 1,000 yen, just one-tenth are at the full price, and another tenth at 1,500 yen, so if this goes through it will mean eight times as many people paying more than paying less!

The final statistic provided is that in 2004 the average ticket price was around 1,200 yen, but by last year it had dropped to under 1,100 yen, according to unnamed sources in the cinema business. Although there seems to be a bit of a slippery-slope argument here, it is iinteresting food for thought!

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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