世論 What Japan Thinks

The 16th regular survey from goo Research into electronic money found that the number of users continues a slide first highlighted in the 15th regular survey, although the report on japan.internet.com does not speculate at what might be the cause.

Demographics

Over the 6th and 7th of July 2010 1,156 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 19.6% in their twenties, 20.8% in their thirties, 15.8% in their forties, and 27.2% aged fifty or older.

My IC card cash gets used on public transport and convenience stores only. All the other shops that accept it also accept the credit card portion, and most of them also award 3% points instead of just 1%, so it’s an easy choice. Furthermore, they more often than not don’t even ask for a PIN when using credit, so the extra effort required is minimal.
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The sixth regular survey by goo Research into mobile devices, reported on by japan.internet.com, produced evidence that compared to the fourth time the survey was conducted smartphones have got more popular.

Demographics

Between the 28th of June and the 1st of July 2010 1,090 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, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.1% in their thirties, 16.4% in their forties, and 27.6% aged fifty or older.

I wonder next time they do the survey if the tablet PC category will see a jump due to iPad purchasers? Furthermore, I also expect smartphones to jump due to the iPhone 4′s release, assuming there isn’t a recall.

My interest in smartphones has waned again – I’m seeing a huge number of new models coming out in the UK and US with various packages of hundreds of minutes and hundreds of megabytes of data for under 3,000 yen, yet here I pay about the same for 30 minutes or a megabyte…
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It’s a while since I’ve looked at a Wikipedia survey, and although the numbers haven’t changed significantly since the last time, this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into Wikipedia serves as a reminder that it’s still as popular as ever.

Demographics

Between the 24th and 26th of June 2010 1,097 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 17.0% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.4% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

I’ve done some editing of Wikipedia myself; wearing a different hat on one of my other blogs I’ve made amendments to some of the Trusted Computing-related entries. However, being in favour of it, myself and a couple of other users are outnumbered by those wishing to retain the NPOV that Trusted Computing is the spawn of the devil^{[citation not needed]}.
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In this the latest mobile phone upgrade needs survey from goo Research, their 52nd in the series, in the report by japan.internet.com they chose to focus on camera-related issues.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 23rd of June 2010 exactly 1,000 mobile phone users from the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.1% of the survey were female, 1.9% in their teens, 13.3% in their twenties, 24.4% in their thirties, 29.2% in their forties, and 21.2% aged fifty or older.

In the latest round of summer model mobile phones, they are a good number now with 13 megapixel cameras, although as most people will tell you, it’s not the raw megapixels but the quality of the sensor that is important. On a mobile with a limited size and often cheap lens, above five or eight megapixels you’ll not see any benefit, and perhaps even a degradation.
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The fifth regular survey into consumer games machines by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com found that in the last year just one in six had increased their games playing.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 15th of June 2010 1,073 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.6% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, and 27.3% aged fifty or older.

I wonder how many of the 43 others in Q1 owned iPod Touches or iPads? They aren’t really games machines per se, but they do get advertised as such, so it would be interesting to see them broken out. Furthermore, if they were counted, I wonder how many of these people are playing more games on their Apples? Let’s hope the sixth time round they have a look.
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The first question one might have is what is diversity; the immediate thing that springs to my mind, at least, is having an anti-discrimination policy at work covering race, creed, gender and sexual orientation. However, in this survey into diversity management by goo Research only one and a half (“foreign” rather than “race”) of these groups appear.

Demographics

Between the 16th and 21st of June 2010 930 members of the goo Research monitor group employed in companies with more than 50 employees completed a private internet-base questionnaire. The sex and age splits were not reported, but 23.3% worked in manufacturing, 14.9% in service, food or drink, 10.5% for local or national government, 9.8% in retail, 9.5% in information or distribution, 6.8% in construction or real estate, 5.6% in finance, 4.3% in distribution, 1.6% in farming, fisheries, forestry, mining, or utilities, and 13.7% in other industry. 16.3% worked for companies with between 50 and 99 employees, 30.1% with 100 to 499 employees, 11.0% with 500 to 999 employees, 19.9% with 1,000 to 4,999 employees, and 22.7% in companies with 5,000 or more employees.

The company I work for does just about everything in Q1. I’m not sure about a specific older person employment scheme, whatever that might be, but we do actively hire staff in mid-career, not just new graduates. We’re extremely active recently in foreigner employment, and I’m surprised that our managing director’s recent writings on the matter have barely hit the Japanese newspapers and blogs, let alone the English-language sphere.

It’s interesting that diversity management here seems to be more about diverse employment patterns for existing staff, trying to allow for working styles other than the 9 to 5 10, work before family. As mentioned above, our company has generous paternity leave on offer, but even this year when two guys’ wives gave birth the guys took one day off for the birth and another for when she came out of hospital before returning to the same old 9 to 10 (pm of course) regardless of necessity.

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With the election for the upper house upon us, although the government has lifted the ban on political party web pages (they used to have to blank) so the candidates are now able to update their blogs, etc, email and Twitter remains banned. To see what people think, goo Research, in conjuction with the Mainichi Shimbun, took a look at what people thought of internet-based election campaigns.

Demographics

Over the 8th and 9th of June 2010 1,079 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. All were of voting age, but no further demographic breakdown was given.

Note that as usual for this kind of report, don’t knows have been eliminated, so I cannot give a sample size for each of the questions.

At least one candidate is ignoring the ban, however.
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An interesting survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into Apple’s iPad found that not just awareness but also desire was high for Apple’s new couch surfing device.

Demographics

Between the 2nd and 5th of June 2010 1,096 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.1% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 12.3% aged sixty or older.

I have been at a conference in Hungary over the last week, and one of the attendees had brought along an iPad as his main device, although as far as I could gather from the demonstration he gave a few of us it was just for surfing and light emailing during the duller presentations. I didn’t see any others in evidence during my travels, even though I half-expected to see one or two on the flight from Japan. I’ll not be trading up from my netbook, as a real keyboard is needed for these translations.
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With the deadline for the digital terrestrial switchover getting ever closer – only 13 months until the 24th of July 2011 – rates of adoption are creeping up, according to this recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into terrestrial digital television, the 14th time this regular survey has been conducted.

Demographics

Between the 10th and 12th of May 2010 1,084 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 17.7% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.9% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

Coupled with the Eco Point system for rebates for buying digital televisions due to end in December of this year (it works out at about 20% off a Japanese brand 32″), surely the next couple of surveys will see the figure surpass 80%. I know I’m tempted to buy with my summer bonus.

As a cross-reference, I saw the government recently claiming that 83.8% of households were digital-ready, a figure that differs greatly from the numbers here. If you notice the wording, though, it implies that these households have at least one digital reception device, which would include One Seg mobile phones, but I hardly see them taking pride of place in one’s living room!

In Q2, I cannot really think why three people were satisfied with the copy protection on digital broadcasts. Perhaps the respondents has either worked on the specifications or were in the business of selling hacking software.
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Last year I barely saw any surveys regarding music consumption, but this year there seems to have been a decent number of them, with the latest offering being from goo Research via japan.internet.com looking at how people obtain music.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 14th of May 2010 1,088 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.8% of the sample were male, 17.7% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 15.6% in their forties, 15.3% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

The question Q1SQ1 is a bit difficult to interpret, especially the first answer that talks about using a specialised tool – I don’t think many of the commercial services offer free downloads in any significant quantity, so I wonder if the figure includes people unwittingly using P2P software?
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