世論 What Japan Thinks

I would recommend free security software to most people, but the tone of this recent survey conducted by Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into free security software seems very much to be taking a sceptical view of free.

Demographics

Between the 27th of February and the 2nd of March 2009 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 14.7% in their fifties, and 5.3% aged sixty or older.

My misgivings about paid-for security software is that they tend to get bloated as time goes on, providing far more features than the average person really needs in an attempt to justify their need for subscription fees. My personal free security recommendations are Avast anti-virus and Spybot Search and Destroy spyware removal, useful if you have a family member who downloads toolbars and desktop widgets of dubious origins.
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As this is an area in which I have more than just a passing interest, I found this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research into the matter of mobile phone software upgrades most interesting.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 24th of March 2008 1,090 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.8% of the sample was male, 17.2% in their teens, 19.4% in their twenties, 15.6% in their thirties, 17.3% in their forties, 18.4% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

I suspect my phone is set to manual mode for update notification; my wife, however, had random power-offs when writing mail that I thought may be due to a wonky keyboard, but there had been a software update for the phone, so she downloaded that update and the problem went away.

The low percentage of those with software bugs is due to Japanese quality, where quality is defined as performance to specification. Some specifications are terrible, and the implementation is similarly sometimes suspect, but everything usually works as defined.
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I’ve looked before at which Office suite Japanese people use, so the basic figures below will perhaps not be so new to my readers, but perhaps there is some new information that can be gleaned from this recent survey reported by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc on the matter of desktop applications in the corporate environment.

Demographics

On the 25th of September 2007 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel employed in the public or private sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 84.9% of the sample was male, 11.8% in their twenties, 34.7% in theor thirties, 39.3% in their forties, 12.7% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties.

Of the product categories listed in Q1, I use Microsoft-only for all categories bar the very occasional FileMaker database and I use Notepad2 for my text-based editing needs.
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This seems a rather odd little survey, although perhaps the nature of many of these reports from japan.internet.com is that they heavily abbreviate the full research resulting in rather difficult to understand results, as seems to be the case here. This time they reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into software.

Demographics

Over the 1st and 2nd of August 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing Inc’s monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties.

You’ll notice when you compare the categories in Q1 and Q3 that there are many well-known free software titles that fall into the Q1 options but don’t appear in Q3, with of course Linux in the Operating System category being the most obvious omission - did users categorise it as a security-related application, a general tool, a server or under the Other catch-all?
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