世論 What Japan Thinks

NEPRO Japan recently published the results of a survey that they conducted into mobile phones with GPS functionality. They conducted the respondents by means of an open survey available through the menu systems of the three main phone companies’ web systems, namely DoCoMo’s iMode, Vodafone (now Softbank) live! (which has just changed its name “Yahoo! Keitai”, judging by the advertisements I’ve seen), and au and TU-KA’s EZweb. Over 17 hours during the 7th and 8th of September 3,608 people successfully completed the survey; 58% were female, 2% in their teens, 35% in their twenties, 44% in their thirties, and 19% aged forty or older.

GPS is Global Positioning System, a system for locating where you currently are based on triangulation with satellites. I’ve heard it doesn’t work so well in the shadows of tall buildings or of course underground, so one would think that the use in Japan is rather limited. However, there do seem to be a number of software tools that build around the GPS system, from walking navigation systems to substitutes for car navigation via, of course, keeping track of your children.
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NEPROJAPAN recently published the results of their research into One Seg mobile phone digital television. Over a 17 hours period from 10am of the 6th of July to 3am the next day they had an open survey posted to the menuing systems of the three big mobile phone companies; DoCoMo, Softbank (or is it still Vodafone), and au. 3,787 subscribers successfully completed the survey; 58% were female, 3% in their teens, 38% in their twenties, 41% in their thirties, and 18% aged forty or older. Note that as a self-selecting survey available for just a limited time, heavy mobile phone users are most likely over-represented in the sample.

I myself quite want One Seg capability, but only (a) if accompanied by playback of MPEG from memory cards, so I rip my own contents, and (b) if available on a device other than a phone. I don’t want the battery going flat on me, and the need for a keyboard, etc, makes the device bulkier than it needs be.

Also note that the basic One Seg service is free, although I did see an advertisement at the weekend for a pay service of about 50 channels.
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Having recently looked at what people do when their computer has a problem, now NEPROJAPAN co, ltd recently carried out a survey to find out about users’ experiences regarding problems with their mobile phones either breaking or getting lost. One day in mid-May of this year they posted an open self-selecting questionnaire to the three leading mobile phone companies’ (iMode, Vodafone live! and EZweb) menu systems and got 3,695 valid replies. The sample was 60% female, 3% in their teens, 37% in their twenties, 43% in their thirties, and 17% aged forty or older.

My phone currently has a half-dead sub-screen, but apart from that, I once lost an earlier phone in a taxi somewhere. Luckily I actually had a backup of my address book as I’d just bought some connection software and had been playing around with it. Since then, however, I must admit to being remiss about backups, although pictures do get semi-regularly offloaded and imported into my PC whenever the internal memory fills up.
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Continuing the recent series of looking at various habits, this time NEPRO JAPAN weighed in with a survey titled “The ease of use of mobile phones”, although the survey looks more at usage habits. They surveyed 4,206 people by means of a public questionnaire available through the iMode, Vodafone live! and EZweb mobile phone sites, for just under a day over the 10th and 11th of April. The self-selecting demographics were 60% female, 3% in their teens, 38% in their twenties, 42% in their thirties, and 17% forty or older. Although this may seem a youth-biased group, the young user is the core demographic they are targetting.

It’s interesting in Q5 that almost half the respondents want to try out a Panasonic phone, versus two in five for Sharp; sales figures suggest that Sharp are the top sellers of phones, but I believe this is because Sharp also sell Vodafone and au-branded phones whereas Panasonic are exclusively DoCoMo.
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NEPRO JAPAN recently published an interesting survey on how mobile phones have changed users’ lives. They got replies from 4,610 people who answered a questionnaire available for one day at the start of February through iMode, vodafone live! and EZweb mobile phone service menus. The sample consisted of 40% male, 4% in their teens, 38% in their twenties, 41% in their thirties, and 17% aged forty and over.

Some of the figures are quite amazing, such as one in four spending over three hours a day on their phone. However, when you consider that the average commute for people is over 90 minutes per day (must find exact figures – I’ve just seen an in-train poster stating that statistic) and many people will be busy mailing or gaming (when they aren’t sleeping), the hours soon add up.

Question 3, on whether people use a fixed or a mobile line at home may very well be biased by people who still live at home but do not pay the fixed line phone bill.

Note also that this survey is self-selecting through a mobile phone menu, so people who only spend a couple of minutes per day on the phone are most unlikely to ever have seen this questionnaire!
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NEPRO JAPAN Co, Ltd recently carried out a survey to see what people do to economise on their mobile phone bills. For one day at the start of December they questioned 5,013 people across the three main Japanese carriers, DoCoMo’s iMode, Vodafone’s Vodafone live! and au and TU-KA’s EZweb, by means of a public poll available through the main menus of all three carriers’ systems. 40% of the sample were male; 4% were teenagers, 41% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, and 16% aged forty and over.

Note that this one-day public questionnaire will tend to attract the people who are already heavy users of mobile web services, although in this case this is probably a good thing.

Mobile phone bills in Japan are rather difficult for me to understand; even something as simple as displaying how much you’d be paying if you were on the most basic plan as a means of comparison would help. Even better would be a recommendation of your best plan based on your last six month’s worth of charges.
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In early December NEPRO Japan looked at the usage of video-enabled mobile phone calls amongst the Japanese mobile-phone using population. They surveyed 4,575 people across the country, 59% female, and 42% in their twenties. The participants were self-selected by means of a link available for just one day from the iMode, Vodafone live! and EZweb service provider’s portal web site.

This survey is self-selecting, so the accuracy is somewhat suspect. For iMode users, most of DoCoMo’s new sales are of phones with video calling features, and users of these new 3G phones tend to choose fixed price plans, so use iMode more, thus are more likely to find these surveys, biasing the survey towards the heavy user, I suspect.

Personally speaking, my current phone has no video calling facility, and I have no real desire to use the feature even if available, as mail is usually sufficient, and it’s a bit embarrassing, plus I don’t know what happens about sound quality if you have to hold the phone twenty or thirty centimetres away from your face. Perhaps a headset becomes necessary for proper use, therefore since BluTooth has only now just started appearing in a significant number of phones we may see an increase in users this year?
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NEPRO IT co. ltd. recently performed a survey on the number of mobile phones people owned. The self-selecting prize draw survey was carried out on iMode, EZweb and Vodafone live! public web sites. 4,283 people, 60% female, replied to the survey carried out from the morning of October 6th to late into the night of the same day. 6% were 19 or under, 41% were 20 to 29, 38% were 30 to 39, and 15% 40 or older.

Q1: How many mobile phones are registered in your name? (Sample size=4,283)

One	64%
Two	17%
Three or more	5%
I have a phone but am not responsible for it (Company phone or other in family pays bill?)	12%
I don’t have a phone (How did they access the site then?)	1%
No answer	1%

Q2: Why do you have multiple phones registered in your name? (Sample size=4,283)

I only have one phone!	66%
Family use phones	16%
To keep private and business matters separate	4%
In case I cannot get a signal with the other	2%
I want to use different features in the phones	2%
To separate incoming and outgoing usage	1%
I want to use different designs or shapes	1%
Other reasons	10%

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NEOPRO JAPAN Mobile Report issue 26 recently published a report on accessing web sites and documents designed for PC use, or at least not designed with mobile phone access in mind. The average browser on a mobile phone is limited by various constraints, not just by the obvious limitation of screen size, but also by page data length – two to five kilobytes seems the usual limit – and by picture complexity and formats, to name a couple of other restrictions. There has been TV advertising for mobiles that can get round this limitation, but the question is are people interested in using these features? There’s also the supplementary question about whether or not once the access limitation is got round, is it actually practical to use your mobile to read the BBC? This issue is not addressed, however.

The survey was conducted on September the 8th and 9th through the iMode, Vodafone live! and EZweb public sites with some sort of prize promotion to get respondents. 4,216 people completed the self-selecting survey, 60% female, with 38% and 41% in their twenties and thirties respectively.

Q1: Would it be useful if you could view PC-facing web sites or files on your mobile phone?

Really useful	46%
Useful	34%
Perhaps, perhaps not	10%
Useful, but I wouldn’t use	8%
Other	1%
No answer	1%

Q2: Have you ever downloaded software to allow you to view PC-facing web sites or files on your mobile?

No, but I want to try it	58%
No, and have no interest	17%
Yes, a free download	15%
No, as my mobile phone already has that feature built-in	4%
Yes, a paid download	3%
Other	2%
No answer	1%

Q3: If you could view PC-facing web sites on your mobile, what sort of sites would you want to use? (Multiple answer)

News, maps, weather	41%
Auctions	37%
Fortune-telling or games	34%
Bulletin board reading and writing	33%
Others	32%
Railway info search	21%
Blogs	20%
Chat	15%
Social networking site	8%

Q4: Which of the following have you viewed, or would like to view, on your mobile phone? (Multiple answer)

PC mail	41%
Others	32%
Excel files	31%
Word files	30%
PDF files	14%
PowerPoint files	13%