世論 What Japan Thinks

iBridge Research Plus recently conducted a survey into video chat, although the portion that japan.internet.com chose to report on was just on chat in general.

Demographics

On the 15th of February 2010 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.7% of the sample were female, 11.7% in their twenties, 39.7% in their thirties, 33.7% in their forties, 12.7% in their fifties, and 2.3% in their sixties.

I don’t do chat at all, although I have used Skype as a telephone.

Oegaki chat was a new one to me - this is chat through a handwriting interface. I found an interesting article describing this phenomenon that gives a good background on what exactly it is.
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In the survey on Skype I translated in July, I bemoaned the fact that there was no information about who people were calling, so I was glad to see japan.internet.com report on another survey about Skype, this time from iBridge Research.

Demographics

On the 27th of July 2009 300 members of the iBridge research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.0% of the sample were male, 10.0% in their twenties, 38.3% in their thirties, 38.0% in their forties, 10.3% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.

I encountered my first serious problem with Skype last week. I needed to phone a UK free dial number, so I called up on Skype, and even though I was within office hours I got a recorded message saying that the office was closed and to call back the next day. However, I used my mobile instead and got through straight away, which was rather annoying.
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Skype, a mostly free internet telephony application, is one of these internet utilities that I feel not enough people know about, so I’m glad to have this opportunity to translate a survey from RealWorld RealResearch and reported on by japan.internet.com looking at Skype, of course.

Demographics

Over the 8th and 9th of July 2009 1,016 members of the RealWorld RealResearch monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 63.5% of the sample were male, 8.1% in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 12.8% in their thirties, 28.8% in their forties, 19.5% in their fifties, and 13.3% aged sixty or older.

One handy feature for people in Japan is that US and UK freephone numbers can be called for free, a feature I’ve made use of a few times.

I’d have liked to have seen in Q2 a breakdown between free and paid usage of voice calling in Skype, but perhaps if one pays for the full survey results one could see a more detailed answer.

Note that outside of smartphones none (as far as I am aware) of the Japanese-manufactured mobile phones support Skype.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the use of Skype in Japan. They interviewed 1,011 people from their research monitor group by means of an internet-based questionnaire. 41.6% of the sample was male, 24.3% were in their twenties, 43.2% in their thirties, 25.4% in their forties, and 7.0% in their fifties.

Skype has been somewhat heavily promoted in Japan, with Livedoor being the main partner, and various hardware is available such as cordless phones or adapters for standard phone lines. However, with Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others offering free PC to PC VoIP service, and with the launch recently of a free IP telephony service in Japan called freep, the marketplace is getting rather crowded.

For those of you interested in learning Japanese, Tae Kim occassionally holds Skype-based language lessons.
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