世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently published a short survey on the usage of internet tools at home. There is a fuller survey report available at a price. They interviewed just 300 internet users, equally split between male and female, aged between 20 and 49 from all over the country, on the 20th of December 2005.

I’m an Opera and Becky! man myself.


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Recently, IT Media published a list from Yahoo! Japan of the top search keywords through Yahoo!’s search engine, grouped into various categories. Below are a few of the categories, where I presume the more adult search terms have been removed! First, the top overall keywords.
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goo Research, along with japan.internet.com carried out their fifth survey on the usage of internet tools. 1,044 people from all over the country, 42.43% male, filled out an internet-based questionnaire in mid-November regarding their usage of internet tools. The age demographics of the survey was 2.30% in their teens, 23.95% in their twenties, 40.61% in their thirties, 22.32% in their forties, 7.85% in their fifties, and finally 2.97% sixty or older.

My personal usage of internet tools is relatively low, I think, even though I run this blog. Feedburner and BlogLines fulfil most of my RSS-related requirements, and Google deskbar is useful too, but since I am a big Opera fan, add-in browser toolbars are not available, but not really needed either. I’m not sure about the exact definition of Alert Services that is used; does setting Windows Update (or any of the numerous other apps that have their own updater) to automatic checking count as using such a service?

Note also that the most popular reason for using a particular RSS service is that a site recommends it. From a blogger’s point of view, does this suggest that we really should jump onto the bandwagons and push our feed links more strongly at our readers? However, after noticing this post on Performancing (the whole site is a recommended read) I wonder if as bloggers we should concentrate as much on a mail feed as on RSS, especially given that over 50% more of the people surveyed here used mail alert services compared to RSS readers.

As a cross-reference, I found a post by Joi Ito regarding this topic with figures from mid June or earlier. RSS readership has grown 50% in just six months, and those not knowing what a blog is has fallen to a quarter of what is was before, according to a recent survey.
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[part 1] [part 2]

goo Research recently carried out a massive opinion poll to investigate how people in Japan use internet banking.In cooperation with NTT Resonance and Mitsubishi Research Institute they surveyed 43,074 members of the goo Research internet monitor group and ordinary goo users. This public poll was conducted for two weeks in the middle of October, with 56.0% of the respondents female. 2.2% were in their teens, 23.3% in their twenties, 40.4% in their thirties, 23.8% in their forties, 7.8% in their fifties, 2.1% in their sixties, and just 0.4% over seventy.

It seems that both conventional banks’ net services and net-only banks do not give any significant discounts on transaction fees – Japan still has lots of fees for doing almost anything outside working hours or more complicated than withdrawning money – but even with that worries about security, which is probably as much due to perceptions as actual danger, need to be addressed to give potential customers the assurance that the services are safe.
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[part 1] [part 2]

goo Research recently carried out a massive opinion poll to investigate how people in Japan use internet banking.In cooperation with NTT Resonance and Mitsubishi Research Institute they surveyed 43,074 members of the goo Research internet monitor group and ordinary goo users. This public poll was conducted for two weeks in the middle of October, with 56.0% of the respondents female. 2.2% were in their teens, 23.3% in their twenties, 40.4% in their thirties, 23.8% in their forties, 7.8% in their fifties, 2.1% in their sixties, and just 0.4% over seventy.

I am unsure whether or not PayPal counts as a net-only bank, or even if it, or an equivalent system, is popular is Japan. However, it seems internet-only banks are surprisingly popular (although since this is an internet-based survey there is some built-in bias), but if bricks and mortar banks offered transaction fee discounts for online usage, perhaps they could seriously erode the net-only banks’ customer base. It’s interesting, given that one of Koizumi’s pledges has been to do away with silly rules for the sake of it, that it seems that net banks cannot be used for utilities payments or lottery ticket purchase. My bank back home, first direct, has internet-based services, but I still prefer the telephone (and with Skype it’s ridiculously cheap!) for all my business.

This is another large survey that I will publish over two days.
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goo Research, in cooperation with japan.internet.com, carried out their 20th survey on blogging in Japan. Note that I have previously translated their 19th survey. Since the number with blogs and the number commenting on blogs have both increased by a factor of six, I wonder if there is a causative relationship here; is genuine interest in the blogosphere increasing people’s urge to post, or is it just blatant self-promotion for ones blog? For me, it’s a combination of the two!

They surveyed 1,083 people, 41.09% male, 1.94% 19 or under, 27.98% in their 20s, 39.24% in their 30s, 19.94% in their 40s, and 10.90% fifty or older.

Q: In the last month, have you viewed a blog? (Sample size=1,083)

Yes	76.36%
No	17.27%
Don’t really know what a blog is	6.37%

The people who have viewed a blog has basically tripled in the last year and a half, and the don’t knows have dropped over six-fold from 40.80% since that very first survey.

As for what sort of blogs people are usually reading, the most popular answer was the bog-standard daily life blogs, at 39.90%, followed by no theme in particular at 32.04%, with film and music blogs third, way back at 16.93%.

Q: Have you posted a comment on a blog site? (Sample size=827)

Yes	28.05%
No	71.95%

This percentage is over double the number in the first survey 18 months ago, and allowing for the fact that over three times the number of people are now reading blogs, this represents an increase of a factor of six in the raw percentage of blog posters.

Q: In the last month, which blog service provider’s blogs have you visited? (Sample size=827, multiple answer)

Kokorogu	26.00%
Hadena diary	34.22%
My profile	4.72%
Blog people	6.77%
Livedoor blog	44.38%
excite blog	27.21%
Doblog	5.93%
gooBLOG	36.40%
WebryBlog	5.08%
Blogzine	3.63%
JUGEM	8.59%
SeesaaBLOG	7.86%
Yahoo! BLOGS	46.07%
yaplog	16.08%
Ameba Blog	26.12%
Rakuten Blog	34.70%
MSN Spaces	9.67%

Interesting that the above are all Japanese-based services.

Q: Have you made your own blog? (Sample size=1,083)

Yes	31.86%
No, but I want to try sometime	29.46%
No, and I don’t want to	32.23%
Don’t really know what a blog is	6.46%

The percentage with blogs or planning to make blogs has basically doubled in the last year and a half. Those respondents currently with blogs has increased by a factor of six. Most people have just one blog service account, at 66.09%, but the number with two or more has over doubled since the very first survey. However, although the number of blogs has increased, the percentage updating their blogs at least weekly has dropped 2.5% to 60.00%, but since the number of bloggers has increased six-fold, this drop is perhaps not significant. As for why people create a blog, the main reason is people wanting to keep a notebook, at 57.68%.

Q: Has your blog had a trackback? (Sample size=345)

Yes	70.43%
No	29.57%

Q: Have you done a trackback on another site? (Sample size=345)

Yes	37.10%
No	62.90%

A new research company to me, Rakuten Research, carried out this recent survey on the use of mobile contents and services, the 18th time they’ve carried it out, but the first time I’ve heard of it!

The survey was carried out at the start of this month amongst Rakuten Research’s monitor group; 2,460 people were selected, almost exactly 50:50 of each sex, with 2,074 of them (86.4%) being mobile phone users from the four main networks, DoCoMo, au, VodaFone and TU-KA. Unless otherwise noted, the sample size for questions are these 2,074 mobile phone users. The main areas of the survey was to find out about the use of “full browsers”, meaning mobile phone browsers that can view PC-based contents, the views on mobile phone information leakage, and communications with eldery parents. However, they have split the results reporting into two articles, so this report is about full browers only. Note that I have translated another survey regarding full browsers.

Q1: Have you used a full browser on your mobile?

All (N=2,074)	9.5%
Male (N=1,042)	12.5%
Female (N=1,032)	6.6%

Q2: For those answering yes to Q1, within the last month, what sorts of web sites have you accessed with the full browser? (Sample size=202, multiple answer)

Search or portal site	46.0%
News or general info site	37.1%
Traffic, maps or travel	26.7%
Shopping	21.8%
Blog	19.8%
Bulletin board	18.3%
Auction	17.8%
Single-function service (dictionary, translation, etc)	10.4%
Other	7.9%

Q3: For those answering yes to Q1, after using the full browser, how has your frequency of access to mobile phone-targetted sites changed? (Sample size=202)

Hardly ever access previously-used mobile sites	35.1%
Frequency of access of mobile sites has decreased	13.4%
Frequency of access of mobile sites has not changed	42.1%
Frequency of access of mobile sites has increased	9.4%

Q4: For those answering yes to Q1, after using the full browser, how has your frequency of access to mobile phone-targetted pay sites changed? (Sample size=202)

Now never access previously-used paid-for mobile contents	47.0%
Amount spend on paid-for mobile contents has decreased	15.3%
Amount spend on paid-for mobile contents has not changed	30.2%
Amount spend on paid-for mobile contents has increased	7.4%

Q5: What issues might crop up (or have cropped up) as a result of using a full browser? (Sample size=2,074, multiple answer)

Packet charge increase	60.8%
Phone screen size too small	44.3%
Corrupted character encodings or screen layout broken	28.1%
Few usable features	25.9%
Worry about viruses or accessing dodgy sites	25.5%
Response from web servers slow	25.3%
Poor usability	20.6%
Cannot view Javascript or Flash-based high-spec sites	15.9%
Others	2.4%
No particular problems or worries	19.2%

Finally, the trends of usage patterns of various major features of mobile phones were investigated. For each of the main functions of the phone, each respondent was asked if they had used it within the last month. Looking back at the historical data the following trends can be seen:

• Picture mail usage has increased from 36.4% to 40.5% in the last two months
• Bar code and QR Code scans are up from 17.6% to 21.5%
• Infrared usage also up from 14.4% to 16.6%
• Usage of all other features up, but none very significantly
• However, electronic money feature usage is still less than 2%

InfoPlant performed a survey of mobile phone users, carried out through the main menus of internet-enabled phones from DoCoMo, au and Vodafone. 16,833 people replied during the survey, lasting one week in the start of September. 67.4% of respondents were female, and iMode users, Ezweb users and Vodafone Live! users were 57.4%, 20.9% and 21.7% respectively. This is another self-selecting survey with a prize draw as a carrot, so the answers should be taken in that light.

Q1: Tell me how often you access sites from your mobile phone

	All	Male	Female
About every day	73.8%	76.7%	72.5%
Four or five days a week	10.4%	9.4%	10.9%
Two or three days a week	10.9%	9.5%	11.6%
About one day a week	3.1%	3.1%	3.2%
Less than that	1.6%	1.3%	1.8%

Not surprisingly, the younger the user, the more frequently they accessed.

Q2: Are you on a flat-rate packet plan? (ie, unlimited internet access)

	All	Male	Female
My phone supports it, and I’m using it	58.0%	59.9%	57.1%
My phone supports it, but I’m not on it, but want to change to it	12.3%	11.5%	12.7%
My phone supports it, but I’m not on it, and won’t change to it	5.9%	6.2%	5.8%
My phone doesn’t support it, but want to change to one that does	20.8%	19.4%	21.6%
My phone doesn’t support it, and won’t change to one that does	2.9%	3.0%	2.9%

Breaking down the table in Q1 by usage of inlimited access plans, we get:

	Unlimited access users	Not unlimited access users
About every day	85.7%	57.5%
Four or five days a week	6.8%	15.5%
Two or three days a week	5.5%	18.4%
About one day a week	1.3%	5.7%
Less than once a week	0.7%	3.0%

Q3: For unlimited access user, compared with before you started the service, what has increased? (Sample size=9,764; Multiple answer)

	All	Male	Female
Site Access Frequency	87.4%	89.7%	86.2%
Time spent at a particular site	60.0%	62.2%	58.9%
Number of games downloaded	29.0%	32.7%	27.1%
Number of non-game applets downloaded	20.1%	25.0%	17.7%
Number of ring tones downloaded	45.6%	46.5%	45.1%
Number of pay sites registered with	12.5%	12.6%	12.4%
Number of mails sent and received	36.9%	37.2%	36.8%
Number of times done shopping from mobile	14.3%	9.8%	16.7%
No change in particular	4.0%	3.3%	4.3%

The age breakdown has a couple of interesting spikes – ring tone download for teenagers is almost 50% more the next age group, and mail usage is about 25% to 30% higher for them too.

Q3A: For not unlimited access user, compared with before you started the service, what do you think might increase? (Sample size=7,069; Multiple answer)

	All	Male	Female
Site Access Frequency	66.9%	63.6%	68.4%
Time spent at a particular site	35.6%	34.8%	36.0%
Number of games downloaded	29.7%	32.9%	28.2%
Number of non-game applets downloaded	17.6%	20.6%	16.3%
Number of ring tones downloaded	41.2%	36.8%	43.2%
Number of pay sites registered with	7.9%	7.5%	8.1%
Number of mails sent and received	26.0%	23.6%	27.1%
Number of times done shopping from mobile	9.8%	6.9%	11.2%
No change in particular	12.1%	15.2%	10.8%

BCN, some sort of umbrella organisation for small computer and electronic goods stores, performed this survey where they questioned 2,547 people, 57.2% male, and with an age profile of 14.5% under 30, 32.4% in their thirties, 34.5% in their forties, 13.2% in their fifties, and 5.3% over 60; and a bonus 0.1% unsure of how old. The PC usage history was perhaps also a bit top-heavy in veterans, 17.9% with less than 5 years, 39.8% between 5 and 10 years, 19.7% between 10 and 15 years, 9.4% between 15 and 20 years, and 13.1% over 20 years, which is quite stunning considering the PC itself is barely over 20 years old!
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