世論 What Japan Thinks

Docomo have recently announced their new line up for autumn and winter. There are almost no new phones; most of them are just refreshes of existing products with maybe a higher-end camera here and a few extra lighting effects there. One new one is the SC-01B, which seems to be just a Japanese-targetted tweak of Samsung’s Omnia Pro B7330 with a touch panel, but the B code seems to be trying to suggest to the customer that it’s an upgraded BlackBerry Bold. Anyway, these NTT docomo new models were the subject of this survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 12th and 15th of November 2009 300 members of the Marsh mobile monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

The Photopanel 02 is a new one on me, but as the name suggests it is a digital photo frame. There was also a 01, but I’ve never seen that anywhere!

Looking at the old and new phones last weekend I feel docomo’s range is getting too confused. Looking at Panasonic, for instance (most of the Japanese manufacturers suffer from this), they have two basic clamshell designs (there’s also a third slider phone), but mix and match features, so you can have a touch-pad keyboard and two-way opening, but a low-end camera. Go for a higher mega-pixel count and you lose two-way opening and the inward camera, but get more emoji and a cartoon character theme. They all have basically the same price so it’s really an exercise in frustration trying to decide which to compromise on.

Oh, and the older models haven’t had any noticable price reduction even though they’ve been superceded.
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Following up on coffee shop chain images comes another survey from iShare, this time looking at cellphone carrier image.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 19th of December 2008 402 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.7% of the sample were male, 15.4% in their twenties, 45.0% in their thirties, 32.3% in their forties, and 7.2% in either their teens or aged fifty or older.

Given SoftBank’s image in the title, it does seem appropriate that they supply Mickey Mouse phones.

Just a quick note to any of my readers who might be docomo users but have missed the news. From the day after tomorrow (1st of October 2008) docomo introduce their “pake-hodai double” flat-rate packet charge. Their English site is rather out of date, but the Japanese page has the details. Basically rather than the mess of plans they had before there is now a simple sliding scale of charges just like the other providers have. For 1,029 yen you get 12,250 packets (about 1.5 megabytes), then each additional 128 byte packet costs 0.084 yen until you get to 52,500 packets (6.7 megs), where it tops off at 4,410 yen. The one point of note is that if you use a full browser (Mobile Explorer, Opera, etc) it doesn’t top off until 5,985 yen, but don’t ask me what happens if you mix both types of packet! So, the end-points are the same if you are a heavy data user, but this is the best plan for light, but not too light, users.

You can apply through your mobile phone, via the My docomo site, or in person at any docomo shop.

However, using your phone as a modem for your computer is still out of scope of the new plan, so get an e-mobile data card instead!

With most phones now crammed full with the latest features, most manufacturers are putting more effort into the design aspect of their phones as the differentiating feature. To see how consumers perceive the look of their mobiles, MyVoice conducted a survey into mobile phone design.

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2008 15,502 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens,l 15% in their twenties, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% in their fifties.

The first phone that I felt was stunning in design terms was the Sharp Aquos with the rotating screen that could change from portrait for standard email use to landscape for One Seg television watching. That phone first came out on SoftBank, but it’s now offered by all three major carriers. To my overseas readers - have Sharp licenced that technology to any foreign manufacturers? I seem to remember hearing that Panasonic’s push-button opening for clamshells has been licenced overseas, but Panasonic seem to keep that feature to themselves as a differentiating factor for the domestic market.

In the graph, I kept Sony-Ericsson separate as some of their hardware is worldwide, some domestic only.
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The SoftBank adverts are my favourites, although there is always the risk of over-exposure with the dog even recently featuring in a photo book and a DVD. However, this recent survey from BlogCh showed no signs of flagging popularity when they asked about mobile phone television commercials.

Demographics

Between the 15th and 17th of July 2008 370 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 14.6% in their twenties, 49.2% in their thirties, 28.6% in their forties, and 7.6% in their teens or over fifty.

I wonder if they’ll have the SoftBank dog using the iPhone? Given that another survey today indicated that the euphoria has passed, will they trot out their dog to flog some more kit? Will they introduce a new character? They had five rather unpleasant cats recently but they only lasted a week or so. Oh, and here is Dante Carver, the black guy who plays second fiddle to a white dog.

Q3 also brings me to another pet hate (as it were) with the SoftBank mutt coming tops as a fireworks partner. Back in the UK, in the run-up to November the 5th they’d be public service advertisements and other reminders to keep pets indoors to avoid them getting spooked by fireworks, but I’ve never heard of such a thing over here.

Finally, if you’re a SoftBank customer, here’s your chance to win a talking Oto-san bank or strap and free Oto-san themed games and deco-mail!
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MyVoice recently published the results of its 6th annual mobile phone service provider image survey. Note that I have previously translated the 5th annual survey.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 5th of February they interviewed 13,352 people from their onlione monitor community: 54% of the respondents were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 41% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

The results here are pretty much in line with what even just the casual observer would conclude about the Japanese mobile phone market, although I would have thought that perhaps as Hollywood stars Brad and Cameron would have had a positive impact on SoftBank’s image, but their television commercials promote talking on the phone, ignoring the fact that most people email, and perhaps news of the rumoured three million dollars salary Cameron Diaz received for one six-hour shoot has soured the general public towards Masayoshi Son’s company.
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With MNP, Mobile Number Portability, having just started in Japan, japan.internet.com reported that JR Tokai Express Research performed a survey into people’s views on MNP. They interviewed just 330 people from their internet monitor group by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 66.3% of the sample was male, 33.3% female, so where that places the remaining one person, I don’t know! 17.3% were in their twenties, 41.8% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 11.8% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.

The sample size for Q1SQ is very small, so it is difficult to extrapolate these figures, but it does seem that DoCoMo is the biggest loser and au the biggest winner. This backs up unofficial figures I heard of about 400,000 net loss to DoCoMo, 600,000 gain for au, and 200,000 less customers at Softbank, despite their suicidal price slashing. UPDATE: I was out by a factor of ten or so! This morning’s TV (recalling from memory, so the figures might not be 100% accurate!) said that au gained a net 103,000 customers, DoCoMo lost 75,000, and Softbank 23,000 over the last week. The figures don’t add up because there are also brand new customers included in the overall totals, I believe, and each company perhaps uses different counting methods.

For me, I had enough problem working out how to use my new phone from the same maker and service provider, so I’d be put off taking advantage of MNP and having to learn a whole new service model too!
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With number portability just starting out, and with Softbank’s computer system melting down from the overload of new customers thanks to their, in my opinion, suicidal new pricing scheme (although the small print needs to be carefully read) it may be interesting to look at a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research over four days from the 20th to 23rd of October, just before the new system was introduced, into what mobile phones from each of the three main providers people desire. They interviewed 330 people from their internet monitor group, 67.3% male, 15.5% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 32.1% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties.

Even although Softbank offer to honour all transferring customers’ loyalty discounts (we get about 30% to 40% off for ours), I do have a dislike of Yahoo!, and I don’t think these special offers will last that long.
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Following on from the recent news about Softbank and Yahoo! buying all the outstanding shares of Vodafone Japan, itMedia published the results of a survey into mobile users’ views on Softbank entering the mobile phone market. The survey was carried out over five days at the end of March and the start of April, with 1200 people responding to a private questionnaire over the internet. The survey group consisted of 400 mobile phone users from each of the providers DoCoMo, au and Vodafone. More detailed demographic information, or where the group of users came from, is not stated.

The most interesting result is that for what people hope fill be the outcome of the deal, in particular regarding call and reception quality. It is a standing joke within the English-speaking community in Japan to call Vodafone “Borderfone” because of the perceived poor quality of reception. This survey shows that this is perhaps a valid criticism, as two in five Vodafone users are looking forward to improvements versus just a quarter of non-users.
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NTT DoCoMo recently published an interesting survey they performed to find out what people thought about mobile phone credit cards. They interviewed 1,800 people from all over Japan in February by means of a web-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, and 150 people of each sex from each decade of life, from the teens to the sixties, responded. Note that the teens consisted only of 18 and 19 year olds, though.

First, mobile phone credit cards are just what the term implies - they are mobile phones with a credit card’s contactless RFID chip embedded within them, so instead of your traditional bit of plastic, your mobile phone now becomes the device with which you Chip and Pin.

Note that currently credit cards are not as widely used in Japan as they might be in Europe and the USA. In addition, most shops and restaurants that are part of a chain will accept credit cards (although one of my local supermarkets doesn’t), but independent shops on the whole do not accept them. Note the answers to Q5, where over four in five use their credit card once a week or less, and the perhaps slightly loaded answers in Q7 (there is no indication if the question allowed a free answer or just a selection from a list, with perhaps lower-scoring answers omitted from the results) suggesting that plastic is preferred for luxuries or large purchases.

Overall, I think that this survey suggests that people will see mobile credit cards as an extension of the current mobile wallets, so they will treat them as something to use everyday for even the smallest transactions. From the provider’s point of view, small transactions still have a fixed basic fee associated with them, so charging a bottle of cold tea to your phone’s credit card could cost the retailer up half the retail price in transaction fees. How shop owners can cope with this new threat to their profit margins remains to be seen, and would in fact make a good theme for a future survey.
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