世論 What Japan Thinks

The 27th regular survey of mobile phone users’ use of computers, conducted by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com, focused on the theme of email newsletters, and in particular mobile phone email newsletters.

Demographics

Between the 9th and 11th of May 2011 1,052 mobile phone using members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a mobile phone-based questionnaire. 55.5% of the sample were female, 3.3% in their teens, 22.8% in their twenties, 37.3% in their thirties, 26.9% in their forties, and 9.7% aged 50 or older.

Decomail is a registered trademark of docomo, an abbreviation of “decorated email”. “HTML email” is probably the more familiar English term for it, email with embedded graphics.

I am subscribed to four low-volume (once a week or so) mailing lists on my mobile phone, one from DCMX (docomo’s credit card) which is quite decomail heavy, one from Mr Donuts that has just emoji, and two others that are text only, although one of the text ones sets the font colour to grey for some strange reason.
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Since most Japanese mobile phones these days support HTML-styled email with embedded graphics and font selection, it is not surprising that as with computer email, mobile phone newsletter publishers are also now delivering their wares in a more flashy form. To find out the extent of this, japan.internet.com reported on the relevant part of goo Research’s 12th regular mobile phone users’ computer use survey.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 10th of December 2009 1,060 mobile phone-using members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private mobile phone-based questionnaire. 55.6% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 27.3% in their twenties, 31.7% in their thirties, 18.1% in their forties, and 6.3% aged fifty or older.

Decomail (sometimes shortened to just decome) is short for decoration mail, which means at its simplest HTML-based email, but usually implies embedded graphics.

I once got a picture-laden newsletter from the masters of spam agressive marketing, Rakuten, but I soon cancelled as I realised I was paying about 20 yen in packet charges just to look at the email! I still get about three newsletters to my mobile, but they are all just plain text.
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Honestly, it’s not just because I’ve recently launched a Japanese emoticon and smiley dictionary that I’m picking up a number of surveys like this one from Point On Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into mobile phone email use, with the focus for this report on textual and graphical emoticons.

Demographics

On the 15th of February 2009 exactly 1,000 mobile phone users from the Point On Research monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were female, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

Even though I have produced the above-mentioned emoticon dictionary, I don’t actually use text emoticons in my mobile email! Most of the time it is the built-in emoji graphical icons. I’d use more decomail (larger-sized, on the whole, animated gifs) but my phone is one of the first models to support them, so the user interface is pretty awkward to say the least.

I don’t get enough mobile emails to use any other pattern than immediate reply, but my blog email is another matter altogether…
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Here’s an interesting survey from iShare that answers the questions that many westerners ask when they see the average Japanese mobile phone email littered with kaomoji smilies and decomail animations, simply “Why?”

Demographics

Over the 28th and 29th of January 2009 668 users of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.1% of the sample were male, 12.6% in their twenties, 46.1% in their thirties, 33.4% in their forties, 6.7% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their teens or sixty or older.

Just in case you missed last night’s post, you can find about 8,000 (and growing) kaomoji facemarks at evoticon. Other technical terms included in this post are emoji, simple icons, and decomail, HTML templated mail, including DIY text animation.
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At the start of November MyVoice surveyed its community to find out what they thought about DecoMail. 8,806 people completed the survey; 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

DecoMail is basically HTML email for mobile phones, allowing you to embed photos, graphics and simple HTML font and colour changes, etc into your message. Almost all of the new generation (DoCoMo’s FOMA, Softbank’s 3G and au’s WIN) of mobile phones support the creation of it, and older phones can display it as it gets converted into a web link at some stage in the delivery process. It can also be sent to (and received from?) external mail servers, although the exact process is as yet unclear. As indicated by this poll, it has got a wee bit of a following, and in fact my wife has recently been getting DecoMail from her friends (and from me too) even though her older phone doesn’t support displaying it inline.

I’ve now just sent my account here a test message (resize your broswer to VGA, please…), which arrived as a multi-part MIME message with the first part plain text (with special DoCoMo characters stripped), the second the HTML version, and the remaining parts the inline graphics. That design is a pre-installed template, already complete with the scrolling text (which goes a long way towards getting it its spam rating), awful colours, and all the other hideousnesses! Some of the other templates are even worse…
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As a sort-of follow-up to one of my more popular recent translations, the emoticons of Japan, let’s have a look at the results of a recent opinion poll reported by japan.internet.com. In the middle of October Cross Marketing Inc interviewed 300 mobile phone mail-using members of its internet monitor pool regarding their use of features like デコメール, deco-mail, available on most of the newer mobile phones that allows the user to send an HTML message with a border or similar template, in-line graphics, selected font colours and sizes, and other decorative features. The demographics of the sample were the usual Cross Marketing equal divisions – half and half male and female, and 20.0% in each of the five age groups from teens to fifties.

Just for the record, KDDI (au and TU-KA) call it デコレーションメール, decoration mail, and SoftBank Mobile’s feature is named アレンジメール, arrange mail. Note that the HTML mail is viewable not just on the models that support its creation, but also on most phones with a built-in browser and even on PCs. Also note that since most people get charged by the packet, there is a considerable expense for both the sender and the receiver.

I’ve not used the feature, so I can’t comment on how good or otherwise it is, but my new phone that I pick up tomorrow does support it, so I’ll have to give it a go.
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