世論 What Japan Thinks

With the sub-notebook market hotting up, and the Asus Eee PC available even in the big electrical superstores at a reasonable price, making it the top-selling portable according to Kakaku.com at the time or writing, this is a good tim to take a look at a recent survey published by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research into home computers, with the column focusing on portable machines.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 3rd of July 2008 1,101 members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 8.7% in their teens, 26.1% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 27.6% aged fifty or older.

In addition to the previously-mentioned Eee PC, other people getting in on the market in Japan include HP with their HP 2133 Mini-Note PC and local maker Kohjinsha with their imaginatively-named SC3KP06A. I’m hoping that the Acer Aspire One will be out by the time I pass back through duty-free at the end of the month, and judging by a recent article on The Register I’ll be spoilt for choice as a flood of Intel Atom-based sub-notebooks come out at the end of this month. I want the Linux one, not for any anti-Microsoft reasons, but just that I’m a stingey git…
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With the G8 summit starting next week and most of Japan in lock-down mode, it is quite timely to look at this survey from goo Research, conducted in conjunction with the Yomiuri Shimbun (their 84th joint survey, just in case you’re interested), into the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit.

Demographics

In the middle of June 1,088 members of the goo Research online monitor panel aged 18 or over completed an internet-based questionnaire. No further demographic information was provided.

There is definitely an over-the-top police visibility even here in Kansai, well away from the venue; even though we had foreign minister and environment minister meetings here last month, if anything the policing has got more visible since they finished. I don’t share “The sky is falling!” panic that many fellow foreigners (and ex-foreigners) are in, and I’m glad that they are being strict at immigration regarding the anti-G8 demonstrators with their worthless press credentials handed out by the organisers of anti-G8 protests.
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The summer seeing the launch of DoCoMo’s new 906 and 706 series, and new ranges from SoftBank and au that don’t fall under a nice name umbrella, and I’ve heard a rumour or two about a new phone from Canada or somewhere made by I think Microsoft and called the zPHune, but perhaps I misheard. Anyway, this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com looked at this as part of their 38th regular survey into mobile upgrade needs.

Demographics

Between the 16th and 19th of June 2008 exactly 1,000 mobile phone users from the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% of the sample were female, 1.9% in their teens, 15.2% in their twenties, 38.0% in their thirties, 28.6% in their forties, and 16.3% aged fifty or older.

I’ve got no intention of upgrading right now, although when I get round to it (after my winter bonus?) the only important feature will be One Seg digital terrestrial television support, and I’ll be buying a summer model then as they’ll be affordable. However, I’m not sure if I’ll actually watch TV on a mobile, but I’d like to have a phone that gave me the option, just in case.
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I’ve got a couple of Nintendo DS learning games, but I don’t have a DS to play them on, but that’s another story. Today’s story is a survey from goo Research, in conjuction with the Research Institute for Digital Media and Content at Keio University into game machine and computer-based self-study.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 25th of February 2008 (although the results were only posted on the 17th of June) 1,063 members of the goo Research consumer monitor group in employement completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The male:female split was 50:50, with the extra odd person being male. The age range is not noted, however. By employment status, 2.9% were senior management, 8.8% middle management, 10.2% lower management, 27.2% ordinary employees, 8.0% contract or dispatch employees, 13.7% part-time or temporary, 26.0% students, and 3.2% others.

At work we have various e-learning courses available that vary from free to quite expensive, with the company usually paying half of the fees, as long as you sit the exams at the end or complete most of the coursework, etc. I’m not sure how many people actually use the facilities though!

Here the term e-learning means online training on either the internet or intranet.
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With the analogue switch-off only three years away, this recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into television finds that there are still a awful lot of old televisions still in circulation.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 9th of June 2008 1,001 members of the goo Research online monitor group successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 9.0% in their teens, 23.0% in their twenties, 24.2% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 27.7% aged fifty or older.

The Japanese for CRT is ブラウン管, buraun kan, which I thought referred to the colour of initial devices, so it meant a “brown tube”, but just last weekend I learnt that it’s so named from the German inventor Braun; in Germany also the CRT is usually called a Braun tube (or whatever the German for tube is).
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Strategies for coping with stress, and mental health care in general, are sadly lacking in Japan. This recent survey from goo Research, conducted in association with All About Japan, into lifestyle, concentrating in particular on work and stress therein, highlights a few of these issues.

Demographics

Between the 28th of April and the 1st of May 2008 1,057 members of the goo Research online monitor panel aged between 20 and 49 and currently in employement completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.1% of the sample was male, 33.5% in their twenties, 33.8% in their thirties, and 32.7% in their forties.

Notice that in Q10, for means of managing stress, men are much less likely to do anything about it bar exercise, and four times as likely to do nothing at all.

I can get my commute to work in just under an hour, although the return usually takes one hour and ten minutes as I need to wait for one connection and sometimes choose the local train due to the ease of getting a seat.
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A significant milestone in the penetration of electronic cash within Japanese society has been reached, with this survey conducted by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into electronic cash showing that now over half the population (of internet users) carry some form of credit-card form-factor electronic cash. This is the first of a new series of regular surveys by goo Research into electronic cash.

Demographics

Between the 19th and 21st of May 2008 1,091 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample was male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 27.9% aged fifty or older.

Note that the questions below were concerned with credit-card sized cards, not mobile phones, so the actual percentage of owners of electronic cash-capable devices would actually be higher, although of course usage is another matter.

I carry an ICOCA rail pass, but I never put any money in it, so I don’t know if that would count or not in this survey! Otherwise, I am quite happy carrying a pocketful of dross around with me all the time.
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Perhaps it’s just the types of web sites I frequent (Slashdot and digg, for instance), or perhaps it’s just that people are reluctant to admit to filesharing even semi-anonymously, but this recent survey conducted by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into movie watching showed P2P the second least-popular way for obtaining movies.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 16th of May 2008 1,087 members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.4% of the sample was male, 12.1% were in their teens, 22.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 28.0% aged fifty or older.

“Better than free” is the basic strategy pursued by many paid services that compete with pirated content. Apple’s iTunes, in particular, mostly achieves this goal, but other systems I have used, especially from large Japanese corporates, are nowhere near realising this. I’ve not personally used any of these mail-order DVD rental systems, as most of my film needs are met by either the cinema or stuff recorded off cable.

I’m not sure why video tape-only people were eliminated from Q2, and finding out the patterns of usage of tape and DVD (and hard disk, for that matter) would have been interesting. Perhaps if one pays to obtain the full results one can learn these details. I’m also a little surprised that Video On Demand and acTVila were not distinct answers for Q2.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on this survey conducted by goo Research, their seventh regular Wikipedia survey. Note that as with most reports on japan.internet.com they report the highlights, not the full survey.

Demographics

Between the 28th of April and the 1st of May 2008 1,085 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 27.7% aged fifty or older.

Wikipedia is very good for simple facts – I used it just yesterday to look up English manga titles – but almost every time I examine an article on a subject I know something about it comes up lacking. Yes, yes, I can hear you all telling me to edit it myself, but I barely have time to write this blog, let alone try to keep up with my changes to make sure they get accepted. The latest I saw was a poorly-written complaint about their shops being expensive in the middle of an article about a major electronics company.

UPDATE: Thank you to one of my readers for edited Wikipedia to get rid of the whinge from the above-mentioned page!

I’ve also written a WordPress plugin for Wikipedia nofollow, that even after a year still regularly picks up a few backlinks.
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Here’s a subject that I haven’t seen a survey on for a while; goo Research used to do a regular monthly survey up until last year when they dropped it and replaced it with a Wikipedia one. The topic, as reported on by japan.internet.com, was RSS readers.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 11th of March 2008 1,100 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 12.0% in their teens, 22.7% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 27.6% aged fifty or older.

Pictured above is my statistics from my RSS feed at FeedBurner for Thursday the 15th of May 2008, my highest ever susbscriber count of 1,991; to each of you I say thank you very much!

I couldn’t blog without RSS – I use Google Reader, and for example to find news for my Trusted Computing blog I have subscribed to half a dozen Google blog and news searches, so whenever a new story appears I get an automatic reminder. On the other hand, for this site half my sources do not offer feeds, which is a bit of a pain.
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