世論 What Japan Thinks

This rather interesting look at electronic item purchasing was conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Over the 29th and 30th of July 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 60.0% of the sample were female, 2.1% in their teens, 9.4% in their twenties, 46.1% in their thirties, 22.1% in their forties, 10.3% in their fifties,5.2% in their sixties, and 4.8% aged seventy or older.

My last computer was bought at the giant Yodobashi Camera in Umeda Osaka, as my wife suddenly took a fancy to upgrading and I didn’t think she’d like to be dragged down to Den-Den Town to circle the bargain stores looking for the cheapest bargain. Our camera was similarly bought there, but my current mobile phone came from work; although we make the things at the office, staff discount amounts to no more than 5% off the new models, but they don’t copy the settings over from the old phone. Although I got my current phone at around half price (6,000 yen instead of 12,000 yen or so), the general hassle means that next time I’m upgrading as a dealer shop!
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With both mobile phones and still cameras coming with video recording facilities, is there still a market for stand-alone video cameras? This recent survey from MyVoice looked at the usage of video cameras to try to find out. Video cameras covers all stand-alone primarily video-recording devices, including those with tape, memory card or hard disk media.

Demographics

Over the first five days of May 2008 14,326 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 17% in their fifties.

My video camera only gets dragged out for foreign holidays, and actually I haven’t copied the tapes to video for the last three years… With the new DiGa, though, there is a digital in from cameras, so perhaps I can get the dubbing done quicker?

With the new AdSense for YouTube features, perhaps I should dust it off and start shooting cat videos?
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This is an interesting recent survey reported on by cNet Japan and conducted by goo Research into the topic of the use of cameras by seniors.

Demographics

Over the 6th and 7th of February 2008 1,001 members of the goo Research monitor pool aged over sixty were interviewed by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.4% were male, and 69.3% were in their sixties, 15.9% aged seventy or older. Note that since this was internet-based, all were internet users by definition. In addition, as a control sample over the same period 174 people in their thirties, 51.7% female, were asked the same questions.

Not falling into either of the age groups it’s difficult for me to comment, but one thing I thought initially was that the number of SLR users is low as I always see a few old people with big cameras whenever I go to parks, but then I realised that it’s just selective recall, as one remembers a big camera.
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Unfortunately I couldn’t find any suitably silly survey for Sunday, so you’ll have to make do with this one, where japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted by goo Research into the topic of broken digital cameras.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 21st of January 2008 1,092 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the sample was male, 16.2% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 12.2% aged sixty or older.

Picture of a broken Panasonic DMC-FX30 by Jeff Youngstrom

japan.internet.com recently reported on another of these fascinating (for suitable values of fascinating) snippets of Japanese consumer behaviour as uncovered by a survey conducted by goo Research into digital cameras, focusing on camera modes in particular.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 9th of December 2007 1,097 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

I use my digital camera in full auto, full silent mode on the whole, but I’ve tweaked the quality down to perhaps medium level; 3 mega-pixels instead of 5 mega-pixels, but high quality mode to try to save a bit of space on the memory cards, although having both a 1 gigabyte and a 512 megabyte card makes this a rather academic exercise. One of the answers for Q2 mentions “Scene Mode”; many cameras have multiple modes for specific situations, not just night, scenery and flash modes, but also close-up, food, baby and I think even pet mode too, although I haven’t studied my instruction manual in sufficient depth to work out what they all do, so just leaving it in auto mode covers 95% of the situations sufficiently.
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My cell phone camera sees rare use, mostly when wifey borrows it to take pictures of food or me when she’s forgotten her own phone. One use she puts her own camera phone to is taking a photograph of the weather forecast on the television then forwarding it to me. I’m sure there must be better ways of letting me know what the weather will be like, but since we can send mails for free, it works for both of us! To see what the average person gets up to, MyVoice looked at the use of mobile phone still and motion cameras.

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2007 13,602 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 17% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

Both wifey and I have memory cards for our cell phones; in fact, she has a one gigabyte micro SD card which finds more use as an extra card for our main digital camera, but neither of us use the card for day-to-day storage, only for exporting (never importing!) photographs. Indeed, it would be interesting to find out how other people use their memory cards.
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With the megapixel count in mobile phone cameras getting ever higher and the functions available on the phones ever increasing, goo Research, as reported by japan.internet.com, performed a survey to find out about cell phone camera settings.

Demographics

Between the 24th and 27th of August 2007 1,088 members of goo Research’s online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample was male, 16.6% in their teens, 17.8% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.4% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

I’d love to see more detailed figureson how the awareness and use of the macro mode, or close-up mode corresponds with use of QR Codes. As far as I am aware, many phones have a dedicated normal mode/close-up mode switch, and when one selects QR Code mode, a big message pops up reminding one to switch the camera into the correct mode. I’ve never understood why there has to be a switch for this or why the phone cannot automatically go into close-up mode when reading these barcodes. Perhaps the DoCoMo official specifications explicitly require such a feature, perhaps due to someone having patents they don’t want to licence regarding automation of this feature?
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I rarely use my mobile phone camera, with just the occassion snapping of a QR Code or the taking of memos of product names or part numbers for when going shopping, but I would find I missed it if it wasn’t there. To find out how others feel, goo Research conducted a survey (reported on by japan.internet.com) on the subject of mobile phone camera.

Demographics

Over the 8th and 9th of June 2007 goo Research interviewed 1,094 members of their monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.1% of the sample were male, 17.2% in their teens, 19.5% in their twenties, 17.9% in their thirties, 17.5% in their forties, 16.8% in their fifties, and 11.1% aged sixty or older,.

I’m not sure exactly of how many megapixels my mobile’s camera has, but I think it’s somewhere between one and two megapixels, and about 300,000 pixels on the inside camera. However, I wonder how much of the dissatisfaction with the megapixel count comes from setting the image capture size too low then importing the photos to a PC. My camera goes up to 1,280 by 960, but I can only take half a dozen photos before I run out of memory, so I usually use a lower resolution.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into digital cameras. Over the 21st and 22nd of February they interviewed 300 people from their internet monitor group by means of a private questionnaire.

Demographics

As usual for Cross Marketing, the sample was 50:50 male and female, and 20:20:20:20:20 of teenagers, people in their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties.

Just last weekend I bought a new camera, a Panasonic DMC-FS1 LS1. Yes, in that pictured pink! I haven’t got round to opening it, but I had to get a new one after dropping the old one a couple of weeks ago due to me getting zapped by static electricity when getting it passed from wifey, knocking the lens extension motor out of kilter when it landed on the ground.

I print infrequently, and save the photos to the hard disk. I think the option of saving to removable media implies moving the photos to DVD or CD as soon as possible, rather than just using external media as a back-up for the hard disk.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing Inc, looked at what people thought about mobile phone cameras. They interviewed 150 male and 150 female mobile phone owners from up and down the country; 20.0% were aged 18 or 19, and similarly 20.0% in each of the twenties, thrities, forties, and fifties age bands.

My current camera has a mere 60,000 pixels, so all it produces are pretty muddy images that look awful even on the tiny screen! However, the QR Code reader is an excellent feature that’s well-supported by many print magazines, but as I understand it they are still to make headway in the rest of the world.
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