世論 What Japan Thinks

infoPLANT recently reported on a survey they conducted into mobile wallpaper. This concerns images for the idle screen on a mobile phone, called 待ち受け画面, machi-uke gamen, in Japanese.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 24th of April 2007 infoPLANT gathered 5,941 respondents by means of a publicly-advertised questionnaire available through NTT DoCoMo’s iMode mobile phone menuing system. This self-selecting sample was 36.8% male, 63.2% female. As noted in an earlier survey, these infoPLANT surveys tend to attract a disproporionately high percentage of people on unlimited usage plans, and those on unlimited plans tend to use pay sites more.

I recently downloaded a cute Rilakkuma wallpaper from a promotion through the convenience store chain Lawson, but unfortunately that promotion has finished so I can’t pass on the URL. However, if you’re looking for some San-X wallpaper for your PC, or want to try scaling down the images to fit your mobile’s screen size, here’s their official web page containing a good number of images of Rilakkuma, Tare Panda, Monokuro Boo, and many others, with not just wallpaper, but also screen savers and calendars.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on goo Research’s 31st regular mobile phone upgrade needs survey.

Demographics

Between the 27th and 28th of April 2007 exactly 1,000 members of goo Research’s online monitor group who were mobile phone users successfully completed an online questionnaire. 54.0% were female, 2.3% in their teens, 18.4% in their twenties, 41.3% in their thirties, 23.1% in their forties, and 14.9% aged fifty or older.

With the launch of NTT DoCoMo’s 904i series of phones having taken place just four or five days before this survey was conducted, the awareness of the new models seems very high! This new series’ main features seem to be two phone lines in the one handset – not a new feature to the mobile world, but the first time a full model range has suported it – and Napster support for unlimited music downloads. This feature also was previously available in some of the 903i phones, but now for the first time all the phones in te one range support it.

Looking at the answers to Q3, it seems the Sharp AQUOS brand is still strong.
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Nepro Japan recently reported on an interesting report on parent-child relationships and email. This perhaps could be considered a follow-up to a previous survery on how people have seen society change due to mobiles.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 6th of April 2007 Nepro Japan collected 3,866 responses through a menu option available through the public menu systems of NTT DoCoMo’s iMode, SoftBank’s Yahoo Keitai and au’s EZweb. 42% of this self-selecting survey was male, 3% in their teens, 36% in their twenties, 42% in their thirties, and 18% aged forty or older.

Not being a parent, and not having a parent in this country, I cannot comment on any personal experiences.

In Q1 there seems to be rather a lot of orphans! Perhaps it includes people who have fallen out of touch with their parents.
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infoPLANT recently reported on a short but interesting survey they conducted into what people usually carry with them, excluding mobile phones and cash.

Demographics

Over a week between the 10th and 17th of April 2007, infoPLANT collected 7,038 self-selecting respondents to a survey available through the DoCoMo iMode mobile phone menuing system. 35.3% of the sample was male, 6.7% female. For the results persented below, the 173 people, or 2.5% who carried nothing with them were eliminated.

I would love to have seen them ask about mirrors, as it seems that the vast majority of women in trains, and quite a few men, have them stuffed away in their bags for emergency make-up sessions.
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I saw on the television this morning a new service (currently free) for camera-equipped mobile phones. Surf to http://kaocheki.jp (顔ちぇき) with your mobile, snap you or your friend’s face, post it off to them and it comes back and tells you which famous person you resemble. Even if you don’t have a mobile or live overseas, you can try attaching a photograph (full face, filling about 80% of the frame) to an otherwise empty mail message addressed to female@kaocheki.jp for women, male@kaocheki.jp for men, or mix@kaocheki.jp if you’re just not sure. This direct method is not guaranteed to work. Mobile phone snaps are usually up to 240×320 pixels and 30 to 40 kilobytes in size, JPG in format, so attaching a 5 megabyte TIFF will probably not work.

UPDATE: Wifey snapped my mug last night, sent it off to the female address above, and in reverse order, at number three I am apparently 16% like 仲間由紀恵 Yukie Nakama, which I suppose is nice. At number two is 中島知子, Tomoko Nakajima, who I am 18% like. She’s one half of the comedy duo Othello. At number one, with another stunning 18% resemblance, is だいたひらる, Hikaru Daita, a dead-pan and rather plain-looking comedienne. The software must be broken! Wifey has just informed me that for the either/or address too Hikaru Daita was my top match.

Also note that although you may be able to email photos from another address, you cannot view the results from browsers other than those on a mobile phone it seems, but the reply email does contain the top match. Whether or not they only reply to mails from mobile phones is another big unknown!

Who do you resemble?

Between the 1st and 5th of April 2007 MyVoice looked at the use of mobile phone address books.

Demographics

17,310 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

Note that almost all Japanese mobile phones come with phone book facilities, with the latest models providing facilities such as multiple phone numbers and email addresses per name, photographs, physical addresses, web addresses, and additional notes.

When I last upgraded it was a cheap upgrade through work, so I didn’t get my address book copied, and although I borrowed the latest version of a mobile phone backup package that claimed to support my phone, it failed miserably to copy due to the cable not working correctly, so instead I had to resort to using my miniSD to backup and restore, but still it couldn’t keep group information intact over the transfer even though I was changing from DoCoMo mova to DoCoMo FOMA. My wife had similar mail group issues at an official DoCoMo shop. Because groups are such a basic feature, it really it pretty disappointing that shops can’t copy that information, as I’m sure that perhaps puts people off upgrading, knowing that they have to tweak all their address book settings.
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infoPLANT recently published a survey that looked into the usage of fee-charging mobile phone sites. The fieldwork for the self-selecting survey was conducted over a week from the 3rd to 10th of April 2007.

Demographics

5,207 people chose to fill out a public questionnaire available through the NTT DoCoMo iMode menuing system. 39.4% of the sample was male, 3.2% in their teens, 31.0% in their twenties, 43.4% in their thirties, 19.0% in their forties, and 3.4% aged fifty or older.

This survey is notable for one figure I’d been hoping to find in regards to infoPLANT, namely how many of their respondents are on fixed-price data programs, or パケ放題, pakehoudai, plans as they are known in Japanese. This survey had five in six of the respondents on these deals. This higher than I expected figure should always be borne in mind when reading future or past infoPLANT self-selecting iMode surveys, as this class of user does not need to worry about, for instance, the rather horrendously large bill that can be run up downloading an audio track; nearly 9,000 yen on a standard plan for a 5 megabyte audio file, and still around 450 yen on DoCoMo’s best discounted packet deals. Investigating further, the percentage of customers who have unlimited packet plans was around 27% as of September 2006 (see page 27) and about 30% at the end of 3Q 2006 (31st December 2006) (see page 2), so one can see the bias inherent in this kind of open survey conducted by infoPLANT.

Also note, even if you are on an unlimited packet program, if you use your mobile phone as a modem, these data packets are not free; stories have been recently circulating about people not reading the fine print correctly and running up over a million yen in data transmission charges!
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into mobile phone body types. Previous surveys have indicated the Japanese love for both clamshell designs and skinny models.

Demographics

Over the 11th and 12th of April 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing’s online monitor pool successfully completed a private internet-based survey. All the respondents were mobile phone users living in Tokyo and the surrounding area. As usual for Cross Marketing, there was a 50:50 male and female split, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

I was surprised to see only one person say they had a Sharp’s AQUOS Keitai. This is the best selling phone design, featuring a quite stunning hinge that they call the Cycloid, it seems. The phone opens like a clamshell, but then the screen can be rotated 90 degrees around a central pivot to allow the user to watch One Seg television in landscape mode.
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Between the first and fifth of March this year, yet another survey that MyVoice conducted was into the matter of water-resistant mobile phones.

Demographics

15,771 members of their online community successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifites.

I must say this is perhaps the oddest mobile phone topic I’ve translated! The only waterproof mobiles I know are the rather chunky and masculine G-Shock watch-inspired G’zOne Casio mobile phones, although I don’t know what the situation is regarding just splash resistance in other handsets. I’ve never given mobile phone waterproofing any thought, myself, and quite frankly I worry about those people who seem to want to read ebooks on their mobiles in the bath, and I hope there is no intersection between the group wanting to use in the bath and those wanting to take photos!
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With One Seg digital terrestrial television reception becoming a standard feature on most higher-end mobile phones, infoPLANT decided to look at One Seg viewing habits and intentions. Over one week in the middle of March they gathered 6,871 replies to a publicly available survey accessed through NTT DoCoMo’s iMode menuing system.

Demographics

Of the 6,871 respondents, 62.2% were female, 3.2% in their teens, 31.1% in their twenties, 43.5% in their thirties, 18.6% in their forties, and 3.5% aged fifty or older.

I’ve only ever watched a One Seg mobile through a glass case in a mobile phone shop, but the picture quality is quite remarkable. I’ve also noticed in the last month or so a few people watching television on the train to work, perhaps one person a week or so, usually catching up on the morning news it seems. The three main things putting me off One Seg are the handset prices, size, as the TV receiver makes it a bit chunkier, and battery concerns, as recharging the phone every night or so would get rather tiresome.

I was quite surprised by the results here, as infoPLANT tends to attract those with newer phones, yet less than 4% had actually watched One Seg on their own devices.
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