世論 What Japan Thinks

[part one] [part two]

This recent survey from Interface In Design into smart television, where the respondents got to compare devices hands-on, produced the surprising result that one Korean model beat three Japanese models in almost every category.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 16th of October 2012 240 people were picked off the street to take part in a Central Location Test, where they could try all the devices under test hands-on. The sample was of people who watched television at home at least thrice a week, and there was a 50:50 split of the sexes in each of four age groups, with 25% in their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties or older. The televisions under test were all 55 or 52 inch LCDs, Panasonic TH-L55ET5, Sony KDL-55HX850, Sharp LC-52L5 and LG 55LM7600.

I believe that in this test people were aware which television was which, in other words there is nothing that I could see in the survey that suggests that maker names were hidden. This makes the graph here even more suprising, as one would have thought the people surveyed would have been more loyal to their local brands. Even if names were hidden, it still makes grim reading for the Japanese television manufacturers, what with now all three of the makers here having their shares relegated to junk status.
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[part one] [part two]

This recent survey from Interface In Design into smart television, where the respondents got to compare devices hands-on, produced the surprising result that one Korean model beat three Japanese models in almost every category.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 16th of October 2012 240 people were picked off the street to take part in a Central Location Test, where they could try all the devices under test hands-on. The sample was of people who watched television at home at least thrice a week, and there was a 50:50 split of the sexes in each of four age groups, with 25% in their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties or older. The televisions under test were all 55 or 52 inch LCDs, Panasonic TH-L55ET5, Sony KDL-55HX850, Sharp LC-52L5 and LG 55LM7600.

Note that The Register has an interesting opinion piece on smart television’s software design.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on the 5th regular survey by goo Research into mobile phone, smartphone upgrades.

Demographics

Between the 27th and 31st of July 2012 exactly 1,000 mobile phone-using members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.2% of the sample were female, 1.0% in their teens, 12.7% in their twenties, 25.4% in their thirties, 31.6% in their forties, and 29.3% aged fifty or older.

I’m biased because I work there, but I hope in the next survey Panasonic will do better, not just because their new flagship ELUGA model is due to be released in Japan, but also this week there has been two interesting smartphone-related announcements, both of which I have an indirect relationship with. First is NFC-enabled fridges, etc, then there is the Japan release of a MirrorLink-ready phone (said ELUGA) and car navigation system.
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I recently got this interesting set of statistics on home appliance market share, from a survey conducted by GfK Marketing Service Japan. The data was collected from a database called ACSISS-E that is updated daily based on sales in a representative sample of Japanese electrical superstores.

The report named the top three brands in each of 22 categories of home appliance. I will try to find their data on audio-visual equipment, mobile phones, etc to report on later in the week.

Note that according to a survey last month, electrical superstores are probably the most popular place to shop for electrical items, not the internet as one might think.

Also note that most of the brands below are premium ones; Zojirushi are about middle of the road, and Tiger are cheap. Panasonic have the best showing, but they are usually close to the most expensive in each category.
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With only seven months to go from the date of this survey before the plug is pulled (perhaps) on analogue broadcasts, goo Research took their 17th regular look at terrestrial digital television. The survey results were published by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 13th and 16th of December 2010 1,097 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 11.9% aged sixty or older.

I’m all ready now, having got my Panasonic VIERA TC-P42G25 42-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV (Amazon affiliate link) installed two days before Christmas. The data channel is well done, and as we enter our postcode when setting up the local weather for the town appears by default. I’ll not be bothering with the AcTVila feature, however, and given this report on hacking tellies (it’s either a Panasonic or a Samsung they analysed) I’ll be keeping it offline for the foreseeable future.

Note that although analogue broadcast is supposed to finish on the 24th of July this year, I’ve heard the cable companies may be asked to continue to carry it, and today’s news said that television stations may also decide to keep broadcasting in analogue.
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We’re now two months into the iPhone era in Japan, so this 39th regular mobile upgrade needs survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com took a closer look at some of the issues surrounding this device.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 21st of August 2008 1,000 mobile phone-using members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.2% of the sample were female, 2.0% were in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 40.8% in their thirties, 24.6% in their forties, and 14.3% aged fifty or older.

Note that for Q1 and Q2, for people with multiple providers or multiple phones, they answered for their main one only.

Apple on 0.3% for this survey is a difficult number to interpret. If you take the aproximate figure of 100 million mobile phones in Japan, this represents about 300,000 users, but figures suggest there has been about 100,000 iPhones sold in Japan. The age group of respondents is biased toward the iPhone demographic, and almost all of them own home computers, so it would suggest a bias, but how much is difficult to predict.

Q4 is a difficult one to interpret. Just over half of those surveyed do not welcome some of the phones; in English being not welcome has negative connotations, but it may be more correct to say that people are just not bothered.
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I know I’ve got a couple of readers who are active in Second Life and my Second Life surveys seem to go down quite well, and I can’t find much on this elsewhere, so here’s a quick report on Panasonic’s Maze opening up in Second Life.

Apparently, just search the Second Life world map for Panasonic (or just click here) so you can teleport to their maze. There you’ll find an Olympic stadium (let’s all dress up as Tibetans and picket it…), an eco zone, a Viera living room zone where you can experience their 150 inch television, history of Panasonic zone, and finally, the rather bizzare Joba zone, where you can virtually experience their virtual exercise horse while watching a virtual television that virtually presents the virtual you virtually riding on your virtual virtual virtual horse through a virtual show jumping course, or something virtually similar to that.

It’s probably already under development, but imagine if you could buy an adapter to map movement of an in-game horse to your Joba, or even better, team up with Nintendo to create virtual jousting. Throw in a Wii with Wii Fit, and you can have also have hand-to-hand combat when you get virtually toppled from your nag!