世論 What Japan Thinks

This month’s regular look at mobile phone upgrade needs (the 46th time it has been conducted) by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com had interesting results regarding two big recent developments in mobile phones, smartphones and high pixel-count cameras.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 22nd of May 2009 exactly 1,000 mobile phone-using members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private intenet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were female, 2.0% in their teens, 16.7% in their twenties, 33.7% in their thirties, 28.4% in their forties, and 19.2% aged fifty or older.

This summer’s models brings cameras with up to 10 million pixels, which is getting to be overkill, as packing more pixels more densely actually can give worse results as one starts to get interference problems. In addition, without a decent lens you’re not going to be taking very good photographs anyway, and looking at the camera on the linked web page, the big round thing looks just for show as there is another tiny circle inside which looks to be the business end.

The number interested in smartphones is pretty low, but I suspect that they have an image of being foreign market-designed phones that feature few of the essential Japanese functions such as emoji, One-seg television, and smartcards. Up to now only Sharp with their SH-04 and related models have produced that sort of smartphone, but with many domestic manufacturers rushing to Google’s Android, expect to see many fully-functioned domestic smartphones this winter or next spring, assuming the carriers don’t request to the manufacturers that they avoid too much openness.
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This was quite a surprising result for me, to see how newcomers into the digital camera market, Panasonic and Sony, were becoming forces to be reckoned with, according to the results of this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 7th of April 2009 1,085 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample were male, 15.6% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.4% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 12.6% aged sixty or older.

There’s a lot of good photography in Japan blogs appearing now – two of my favourites are Tokyo Times and i, cjw.

Hmm, a post about cameras without a photograph…
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Here’s one of these subjects for a survey that make me scratch my head and wonder why they really asked this. This time japan.internet.com reported on a survey by goo Research into broken digital cameras.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 27th of January 2009 1,083 members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% of the sample were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

As all I have is a cheap and cheerful compact digitial camera I’ve never thought that it might have the facility for a firmware upgrade; given the rate of model turnover buying a new camera is the only way of getting a new version! I’ve of course heard about upgrades for digital SLRs, but let me check the support web site for my camera – oh, they do have firmware upgrades even for the compact cameras! It doesn’t tell you what they do, however…
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In Japanese, an SLR is 一眼レフ, ichigan refu, very much a direct translation of Single-Lens Reflex camera. However, it can be a bit of a mouthful and the Japanese do like abbreviating things, and along with compact digital camera (which is a direct loan word from English), there are many abbreviations that people have adopted. To find out what they are, goo Research conducted a survey reported on by japan.internet.com into digital cameras.

Demographics

Between the 25th and 29th of September 2008 1,084 members of the goo Research online monitor panel successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 12.4% aged sixty or older.

I usually call my point and click (a pink Lumix) a digi-camé in both Japanese and English. I’ve never really had the reason to call a digital SLR anything in Japanese, however.
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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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