世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com released the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research conducted on the first of August into opinions on Smartphones. They interviewed 331 members of their monitor group, 58.3% male, by means of a private internet survey. 13.9% were in their twenties, 36.3% in their thirties, 29.3% in their forties, 13.0% in their fifties, and 7.6% in their sixties. Note that JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor group seems to have a disproportionately high number of business people, so the results should be read in that light, so the knowledge and usage of Smartphones and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) is probably higher than in a truely random sample.

Despite, or more likely because, standard phones in Japan having very high specification level, the market for Smartphones seems very limited. There have been a few models released, but they have a niche market and are rarely promoted in the high street shops. I’m surprised a full QWERTY keyboard came so low in the ranking, but perhaps people were imagining that only pinkie-sized could be squeezed into a mobile. However, I still have fond memories of my Psion Series 5 (I lost it in Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam) and its amazing mini keyboard. Something like that with BlueTooth support for a voice headset would be wonderful. Anyone know where to buy a second-hand Psion in Japan?
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japan.internet.com recently reported on JR Tokai Express Research’s survey into bookmarking habits. Towards the end of July they interviewed 331 internet users from their monitor group: 67.4% were male, 13.6% in their twenties, 35.3% in their thirties, 35.0% in their forties, 12.1% in their fifties, and 3.9% in their sixties.

This is an interesting set of questions, although I would have also liked to have seen Q1 as a multiple answer question. For Q3, I’d like to say I use an RSS reader, but only low-traffic sites (up to four or five new items per day) get into my reader; any more and I feel I would rather just use my bookmarks so I can scan headlines faster and easier. Incidentally, just less than half of the Japanese survey sites I regularly scan offer an RSS feed for their updates, which is a bit of a pain.
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Just over a month ago japan.internet.com reported on a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into online payments. Towards the end of June they got responses from 330 internet users; 64.8% were male, 14.2% in their twenties, 29.1% in their thirties, 34.8% in their forties, 17.9% in their fifties, and 3.9% in their sixties.

I’m not really sure why people feel such reluctance to using their credit card online, and the column makes no mention of the reasons either. Perhaps it is an issue of trust, or perhaps it is just a general sense of the internet being dangerous. I reacon that the net, SLL in particular, is safer than the average shop, and the danger of hacking web sites can result in data leaking from offline as well as online purchases.
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey by JR Tokai Express Research on mobile phones and memory cards. The results presented in the story were in fact extracted from fuller research in JR Tokai Express Research’s 26th regular survey on mobile phone upgrading requirements. 330 people completed their private internet questionnaire; 69.7% of the sample was male, 10.6% in their twenties, 37.6% in their thirties, 33.3% in their forties, 13.0% in their fifties, and 5.5% in their sixties.

With phone cameras now up to 2 megapixels or more, and music download and playback features becoming commonplace, users of both these features may require somewhere to offload the data. I don’t know about the latest music phones, but many of the previous models with memory card slots came with a 16Mb card included. This should be used as a baseline when looking at Q2. Also, the current market price for a 128MB mini-SD card (the most-used format) is about 2,500 yen.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on commercial email magazines. They interviewed by means of a private internet-based questionnaire 331 people working in private industry. 76.1% of the sample was male, 14.5% in their twenties, 45.9% in their thirties, 32.9% in their forties, 6.3% in their fifties, and just 0.3% (one person) in their sixties.

Many major companies with online presences produce these email magazines, although one drawback I find is that whilst subscribing is easy, unsubscribing can be a pain, as there is rarely a one-click solution; often one needs to log into an account, find the settings, then turn them off. I have had to redirect a few of them straight to the spam bin as I’ve been unable to find out how to turn them off!
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Last month japan.internet.com reported the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research regarding the use of support call centres. They interviewed 330 people employed in both the public and private sectors; 83.0% were male, 10.0% in their twenties, 41.8% in their thirties, 32.7% in their forties, 14.5% in their fifties, and 0.9% in their sixties.

I’ve once phoned a support line in Japanese for a problem with my ISP’s free router and the ADSL performance. The ISP was another division of the company I work for, and the notebook PC I was trying to connect with was a company-issue machine with the standard company installed software, but still they started the script from “Are you sure you’re plugged in?” The problem was something to do with performance being dreadful – I’d changed providers but the throughtput dropped from a few megs a second to barely dial-up speeds, and uploading even the shortest mail would time out. I finally convinced them it was their fault, not mine, that the line was slow, but it still took them another week or so to do whatever they needed to do at their end to restore the speed.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted on the 5th of July by JR Tokai Express Research into viruses and spam. They interviewed 330 members of their monitor panel who used a PC or Mac at home. 70.0% were male, 0.9% were in their teens, 11.2% in their twenties, 34.5% in their thirties, 33.3% in their forties, 16.1% in their fifties, and 3.9% in their sixties.

This looked at people with PCs or Macs, where I presume that PCs implies a Windows OS. One might think that Linux users would distort the virus figures, but as a previous survey on home operating systems showed, just one person in 300 was running Linux as a primary home operating system. In Q1, I presume virus covers trojans and rootkits and prehaps even spyware, and in Q1SQ, catching one from a LAN includes the internet.

In Q2, if you add up the number of people reporting using spam filtering, you have at maximum just a small majority using anti-spam methods. However, this figure may be affected by first, people being unaware of their ISP’s spam filtering, and second, if you’re relatively careful, you can get almost no spam. My wife, for instance, just gets one a day even though she has given her email address out to quite a few mail magazines and other web sites.
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japan.internet.com published the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into mobile information devices. On the last day of June and the first of July they interviewed by means of a private internet survey amongst their monitor group 330 people, 64.8% male. 10.0% were in their twenties, 30.6% in their thirties, 33.6% in their forties, 19.1% in their fifties, and 6.7% in their sixties. Note that this survey was looking at personal, not business, requirements.

I was suprisised that more people said that their ideal mobile environment would contain a spreadsheet editor rather than a scheduler, but perhaps this reflects the fact that many people already have sufficient mobile scheduling capability, be it either a pen and paper diary or a mobile phone’s function; most phones nowadays come with a rather functional scheduling application.
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japan.internet.com recently published a survey conducted JR Tokai Express Research on the use of home networking. They interviewed 330 people from all over the country to find out their views. 60.6% of the sample was male; age demographics were 20.3% in their twenties, 31.2% in their thirties, 27.9% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 5.2% in their sixties.

My personal experience with “wartraining” (like wardriving, only from the train!) is that on my ride home I can pick up about 60 or so open wireless access points according to NetStumbler, the bulk of them being Yahoo BB! wireless routers in their default configuration. Sadly this survey (or at least the free preview that I have translated) did not ask any security-related questions.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with JR Tokai Express Research, looked at the issue of mobile phones for children. At the start of June they interviewed 330 people, 92.4% male, between the ages of 30 and 50, employed by public or private enterprises, and having children. You will know from my previous reports on surveys that women are not well-represented in the workforce, especially after childbirth.

au in particular are heavily promoting their children’s mobile phone on television right now; the parent (mother, of course) gets a live update overlaid on a map of where the child, or to be more precise, the child’s mobile is. I personally believe that most of these GPS tracking features are playing on unnecessary fear. I’d love to see a survey asking purchasers of these phones if they also (a) belt up their kids in the car, (b) get them to wear a helmet on the bike, and don’t ride two (or even three) up on mother’s bike, and (c) don’t leave under-10s home alone, all of which are much more injury- or death-prone than stranger-danger.
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