世論 What Japan Thinks

I’ve read a grand total of exactly one book on a PDA, and zero on mobile phones. I just found it too tiring squinting at a small screen, and as I’m not on an unlimited plan, downloading material to my mobile phone is prohibitively expensive. To find out what Japan thinks, let’s look at a survey reported by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research on the topic of electronic books.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 20th of September 2007 1,088 members of goo Research’s online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.0% of the sample was male, 17.3% in their teens, 19.9% in their twenties, 18.0% in their thirties, 17.2% in their forties, 16.6% in their fifties, and 11.0% aged sixty or older.

Note that DoCoMo and SoftBank (and most likely au too) have free manga libraries for their customers, if you have an unlimited contract and looking for something to download and practice your Japanese on.
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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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