世論 What Japan Thinks

The results of the 54th regular survey by goo Research into mobile phone upgrade needs was recently reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 19th of January 2011 exactly 1,000 mobile phone-owning members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 1.3% in their teens, 13.3% in their twenties, 30.7% in their thirties, 30.1% in their forties, and 24.6% aged fifty or older.

The abbreviations in the headline refer to the top five entries for Q3. With smartphones due to overtake feature phones very soon in terms of new sales in Japan (I hear the figure of currently two in five new phones being smartphones), and with the local makers now bringing out their smartphones with four of these top five features (I’m not aware of a water-resistant smartphone), the iPhone’s dominance in the Japanese market is sure to come to an end.

In lieu of a graph, let’s have a dog in school uniform instead:

Which reminds me, Lee at Tokyo Times found a much better pair of dogs in school uniforms.
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With One Seg terrestrial digital television now having crossed the 50% threshold in mobile phones (according to another survey; this one just doesn’t quite make it), with most One Seg mobile having recording facilities, and with many of the new hard disk video recorders having options to save contents to memory cards for replay on mobile phones, this recent survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into video on mobile phones looked at how these features are being used.

Demographics

Over the 2nd and 3rd of October 2008 300 mobile phone-owning members of the Marsh monitor group answered a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was evenly split 50:50 male and female, and 20:20:20:20:20 between those in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and sixty or over.

Yesterday evening I) watched One Seg for the first time, but even on a slow local train, my wife’s external aerial-free phone kept breaking up so the best we could manage was the subtitles! That probably goes some way to explaining why the numbers watching on the move are relatively low.
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Here’s another look at cell phone One Seg, this time by goo Research as reported by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 31st of August and the 3rd of September 1,072 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% were male, 17.3% in their teens, 20.1% in their twenties, 17.0% in their thirties, 17.7% in their forties, 17.0% in their fifties, and 11.1% aged sixty or older.

I’ve posted a number of One Seg digital terrestrial television surveys recently, so I suppose there is not much terribly new here, but with more polls and more data points saying roughly the same thing, one can be more confident about the accuracy of the data.

An interesting extra fact from this report was that on the 16th of August 2007 au announced that they had made their 5 millionth contract for a One Seg-compatible phone.
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Recently I’ve been seeing more and more people watching One Seg television broadcasts (digital terrestrial television) on their cell phones, particularly in trains. Whether this apparent increase in popularity is due to more One Seg-ready phones being sold, or whether it is a function of people now feeling comfortable watching television on the train, I don’t really know. To learn more about what the average person thinks regarding this matter, MyVoice conducted a survey on this topic of mobile phone One Seg functions.

Demographics

Over the first five days of August 2007 12,404 members of the MyVoice online community successfully completed an online survey. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 17% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

As mentioned in the introduction, I see more people watching their phones, so I am beginning to want to do the same myself, not because I find Japanese television that interesting most of the time, it’s just that I feel somewhat left out these days! My next phone upgrade isn’t due until perhaps next Spring, and if I can’t get a suitable handset under 10,000 yen I’ll just not bother!

Oh, and what is One Seg anyway? I know that it is short for One Segment, but wait while I look up the detailed meaning… Ahh, here’s a good explanation from Pink Tentacle about what it really means.
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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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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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