世論 What Japan Thinks

With tomorrow (July 11, 2008) being release day in Japan of the 3G iPhone through SoftBank, I thought I’d add to the tsunami of articles by adding this survey from BlogCh that looks at, amongst other things, what people feel is stopping them from buying Softbank’s iPhone.

Demographics

Between the 27th and 30th of June 2008 427 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.1% of the sample were male, 11.5% in their twenties, 49.2% in their thirties, 32.3% in their forties, and 7.0% other ages. The sample was pre-screened with all selected being holders of personal-use mobile phones.

It’s very interesting to note in Q2 that women seem slightly more interested in the iPhone than men, and in the detailed breakdown by current provider (see original survey for details) I think I could detect some envy amongst DoCoMo users!

One ease of use issue I’ve not seen specifically addressed but which is important in Japan is whether you can write email one-handed hanging off a strap in a crowded train. Inability to be thumb-driven in this fashion will be a black mark among reviewers, I suspect.

Commenting on another blog, I just realised that here about 13.3% are investigating purchasing, whereas earlier this month when looking at all the regular new models from DoCoMo, au and SoftBank just 6.7% wanted to buy any one of all the other summer 2008 phones. Incredible!

I also see that Strapya is already decked out with a few 3G iPhone accessories from Japan!

This survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into the matter of the iPhone also finds that a surprising to me percentage of people are aware of the details of the launch of the device.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 23th of June 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sex and age breakdown was not reported, although Marsh usually has a 50:50 sex split, and 20% of people in their teens, twenties, thirties and forties, and the remaining 20% split between those in their fifties and those aged sixty or older.

My price predictions, then my reports of a leaked pricing memo have both turned out to be wrong, as on the 23th of June there was an official annoucement of the iPhone price. I still feel that the price is a bit low and as it undercuts the Series X smartphone prices, so I wonder if there is hidden charges or any extras that will bring the price up a bit. In Japan, as there is little public WiFi, the iPhone will put quite a strain on the mobile network, so does SoftBank have the capacity to handle a successful iPhone?

Oh, and here’s a rather low-quality video of the Japanese 12-key input method running in an emulator, using a mouse rather than a finger. I like the pop-ups when you hold down a button.

Perhaps I should temporarily rename the blog to “携帯 What Japan Thinks of the iPhone” since I’m joining in on the hype at every opportunity! This time it is JR Tokai Express Research Inc, as reported by japan.internet.com, carring out a survey into the iPhone.

Demographics

On the 13th of June 2008 330 mobile phone-using members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel employed in private industry completed a members-only internet-based questionnaire. 71.2% of the sample were male, 11.8% in their twenties, 44.5% in their thirties, 32.4% in their forties, 9.1% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.

In Q2, it is curious that 10 people selected SMS as a feature they wanted to use. The users of SMS are few indeed, I think (I can’t remember the last time mentioned it on this blog), as a full email service (including HTML these days) is standard on phones, and there’s no such thing as free SMS in most plans. Perhaps it’s just that a few people are curious to see what exactly the fuss is about?

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A number of Japanese blogs are publishing what purports to be a confidential memo from SoftBank on the pricing plan for the new 3G iPhone; I found it at Uhyohyo no hyo. Assuming the memo to be genuine, what they are offering is as follows.

New Super Bonus

The “New Super Bonus” is a special iPhone-only tariff. For the handset, the price is a stunning 61,920 yen, payable in 24 monthly installments of 2,580 yen. However, with a special discount of 1,780 yen per month, that takes the price down to the Steve Jobs-promised under $200 level of 19,200 yen, 800 yen per month. Next we have the basic packages of White Plan and S! Basic Pack, 980 yen and 315 yen, for free calls outwith 9pm to 1am to any other SoftBank phone and basic mail and web access fees respectively.

iPhone-only Platinum Pack

With the above covering the basic facilities, next there is the data plans. First is Platinum Pack 1, offering unlimited Yahoo! Mail and MobileMe mail for 1,800 yen per month. Next is Platinum Pack 2, offering unlimited Safari-based browsing for 6,800 yen per month.

Release dates

The 8GB SoftBank iPhone will be released on the 11th of July, the 16GB towards the end of July. Pricing for the 16GB version is yet to be decided.

Adding it all up

The above sums up to a total charge of 10,695 yen per month, but, and it’s a big but, no free minutes to other service providers and no free calls from 9 pm to 1 am. A 300 free minutes plan, for instance, costs 8,190 yen per month.

Although a survey last year showed that around 40% fancied an iPhone, now we have the first survey regarding the concrete release date to see if people are prepared to put their money where their mouths are. This survey was conducted by iShare and BlogCh and the topic was actually mobile phone battery changing, but since the iPhone doesn’t have a user-changeable battery pack, they shoehorned an iPhone question in.

Demographics

Over the 5th and 6th of June 2008 402 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.5% of the sample was male, 12.2% in their twenties, 43.5% in their thirties, 34.8% in their forties, and 9.5% in their teens or over fifty.

If you’ve read my recent estimate of monthly fees for a SoftBank iPhone you may be put off buying it, I suspect. I’ve had some criticism of my figures, but I wanted to choose 300 free minutes as a realistic figure, as that is just 10 minutes a day with free calls only to other SoftBank owners, and the X Series unlimited packet service at 9,800 yen a month is their Smartphone tariff, and although there is a sliding scale of charges, the upper limit of 52,500 packets per month is just 6.7 megabytes of data, or about 224 kilobytes per day, or just one page of many popular web sites, thus surely everyone will use their full allowance.
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Executive summary: 5.7% more expensive than DoCoMo’s latest models over one year.

With the recent confirmation of the rumours regarding the release of the iPhone in Japan via SoftBank, and with Steve Jobs promising that no-one will pay more than $199 dollars for the 8GB device, let us look at what this will actually cost, once one adds a service contract into the deal. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll assume one US dollar equals one hundred yen, so the price Steve Jobs is promising is 19,900 yen. As a point of comparison, the cheapest price I see offered for the 8GB iPod touch is 32,448 yen, so for the handset alone it is over a third cheaper. However, this figure ignores the contract that must be purchased to go along with the handset. By working from the information provided on the SoftBank web site, one can determine the expected total cost of ownership.

• Basic package free minutes:
  8,190 yen (L Plan Value, 300 free minutes, 10.5 yen per 30 seconds afterwards)
• Voice mail service:
  315 yen (extra for visual voice mail?)
• Email, web access fee:
  315 yen
• Unlimited data packets:
  9,800 yen (X Series smartphone price)
• Total monthly charge:
  18,602 yen
• Total one-year cost:
  223,440 yen

Note that if you use less than 6 MB per month the data packet cost will be lower. So, adding in the 19,900 yen for the handset, that’s 243,340 yen for a year, or about $2,433 or £1,160 in the UK. Note that actual costs might be cheaper if you add family discount plans, loyalty discounts for existing customers, and so on. Actual costs may also be more expensive if you go over your minutes, and also adding in an extra 980 yen per month for free calls to all other SoftBank phones from 1 am to 9 pm, and free calls all the time to family members.

Another plan, the Gold Plan, has a basic package charge of 9,600 yen per month with 200 minutes, but free to other SoftBank phones from 1 am to 9 pm, and 21 yen per 30 seconds outside these hours or to other carriers, but with discounts from 37% to 70% for long-term customers, and loyalty bonuses can be carried over from other carriers. Then there’s the Super Bonus, which has even more complicated trade-offs, but we’ll not go into that here…

By comparison, looking at the just-released range of phones from DoCoMo, the 906i series, a handset costs around 50,000 yen, then monthly costs for a similar service to the above is 8,400 yen for L Value plan with 240 minutes then 10.5 yen per thirty seconds, 5,985 yen for unlimited data packets on full browser, 315 yen for voice mail, and 315 yen for iMode access, giving a total monthly cost of 15,015 yen, and a yearly cost of 230,180 yen including handset, or $2,302, or £1,101 in the UK. This makes the iPhone 5.7% more expensive than DoCoMo‘s offerings, although with a myriad of discount schemes available the real price difference is much, much harder to directly quantify.

Of course, without emoji icon support, both display and writing, it will not make much headway amongst the influential youth set (yes, that will be a deal-breaker), and with Flash definitely not supported, despite being a standard feature on most new phones, the SoftBank iPhone will be hard to sell. However, as I predicted over a year ago, and I am yet to see any data to make me want to change my mind, the lack of One Seg television and FeliCa-based electronic cash will not affect the desirability of the SoftBank iPhone.

This is the title of a recent report produced by Rubicon Consulting, which I picked up via Michael Mace’s blog. I love statistics and stories on the iPhone, and although this is a study of the USA market, I will project from the US findings to look at if similar trends can be observed in Japan, and will Apple’s device be a success or not over here based on the reported results. You may have heard the recent news that the production of a 3G iPhone has started, so the Japan release is surely getting near. Let us look at the key statistics in the full report and see what they mean. All statements about the Japanese market are based on surveys previously translated on this blog.

Demographics

460 randomly-selected iPhone users from all over the US completed an internet-based questionnaire. The sex breakdown is not listed, but by age 0% were under 18, 5% were between 18 to 21, 15% between 22 to 25, 30% between 26 to 30, 26% between 31 to 40, 13% between 41 to 50, 6% between 51 to 60, 4% between 61 and 70, and 1% over 70 years old.

User satisfaction

Overall over 40% were strongly satisfied with most of the features, and almost 80% satisfied to some degree. However, under 30% were strongly satisfied with data speed; in Japan with ubiquitous 3G, the need for speed will surely be even stronger.
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< ?PHP
include "/home/whatjapa/public_html/libchart/libchart.php";

$chart = new PieChart(400, 200);

$chart->setTitle(“Might you like to buy Apple’s iPhone?”);
$chart->addPoint(new Point(“Yes”, 51.7));
$chart->addPoint(new Point(“No”, 19.3));
$chart->addPoint(new Point(“Don’t know”, 29.0));

$chart->render(“/home/whatjapa/public_html/image08/buy-iphone-jan.png”);
?>

Two days, two mentions of Apple’s iPhone! This time, however, rather than trying to shoehorn it into an existing survey, japan.internet.com reported on a survey by conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into Apple’s iPhone.

Demographics

Between the 9th and 11th of January 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group employed in either the public or private sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 80.0% of the sample was male, 10.9% in their twenties, 36.4% in their thirties, 36.1% in their forties, 13.9% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.

This is also well-timed with regards a report on Forbes about the iPhone (thanks Gen!) which takes the rather safe line that the latest NTT DoCoMo 905i series does everything and more already, and that the price tag is rather prohibitive. Looking at Q1SQ2 below, it seems that almost no-one is willing to pay the price it was initially offered at in the USA, but well over a quarter of the potential customers are willing to pay around the current market value. This also ignores the fact that the previously-mentioned 905i series is selling, and selling well, at over 50,000 yen on a standard pricing plan, and of course the up-front cost is just a fraction of the total cost of ownership. To compare, in the USA the cheapest unlimited data plan costs $59.99 with 450 free minutes, 5,000 evening and weekend minutes, and 45 cents per minute after that, whereas in Japan the cheapest 905i plan is 2,000 yen (excluding tax) for 25 free minutes (300 free minutes would be 8,000 yen!), 400 yen for answering machine and call waiting service, 200 yen for iMode walled-garden functionality, 5,700 yen pake-houdai full unlimited data packet plan for full browser, and then 40 yen per minute afterwards. This makes a USA iPhone cost around $1,839 for two years including $399 for the handset, or about 200,000 yen, versus a minimum 249,200 yen for a 905i series phone including the 50,000 yen handset cost, not forgetting that a Japanese tend to upgrade more frequently than once every two years, making a basic 905i about 25% more expensive than an iPhone. If one compares the package with a similar amount of minutes, the price becomes 393,200 yen, almost double the price! To be generous to NTT DoCoMo, after a year you may become eligible for a 35% discount, rising to 50% after 10 years, so a worst-case scenario is closer to 333,140 yen, only 66% more expensive, and a best-case of 221,600 yen, still 10% more expensive than an iPhone. Similar costs apply to the other main carriers, SoftBank and au.

If you want to read more on the iPhone in Japan, please view my article on why Apple’s iPhone will succeed in Japan, or catch up on all past articles on the iPhone.
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As most Apple and iPhone watchers are aware, shortly after releasing the iPhone at $600 they dropped the price to $400, although they did give refund vouchers to many customers. The press thought little of it, although I did not see any statistics to suggest how the average US resident felt. To find out what the average Japanese person felt looking in from the outside, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into Apple’s brand image, and in this article focusing on the iPhone pricing.

Demographics

On the 25th of October 2007 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel employed in either the public or private sectores completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 81.8% of the sample was male, 9.4% were in their twenties, 40.9% in their thirties, 37.9% in their forties, 9.1% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.

As I have no intention of purchasing an iPhone myself, I can’t say I really felt much about their strategy, and given how many fanboys Apple seems to have, I couldn’t really understand the need to cut the price so early.
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Just when you thought the survey companies (and this web site too, it must be said) had flogged Apple’s yet-to-be-released-in-Japan iPhone to death, along comes the new iPod Touch and a new excuse to look at Japan’s love affair with Apple’s portable devices. First out of the starting gate was Yahoo! Japan Value Insight with a detailed survey on Apple’s iPod Touch.

Demographics

Over the 8th and 9th of September 2007 400 people from Yahoo! Japan Value Insight’s online monitor pool answered a private internet-based questionnaire. All respondents owned portable audio devices, from digital players to CD players, MD players, and even cassette players. The group was split 50:50 male and female, but no details on the age profile was given.

Note that the full survey covered people’s existing players, the iPhone and the iPod Touch in more detail.

Note also that the question the headline answers refers more to a desire to be in possession of the two new devices rather than a specific willingness to turn up at a store with cash in hand.
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