世論 What Japan Thinks

With both mobile phones and still cameras coming with video recording facilities, is there still a market for stand-alone video cameras? This recent survey from MyVoice looked at the usage of video cameras to try to find out. Video cameras covers all stand-alone primarily video-recording devices, including those with tape, memory card or hard disk media.

Demographics

Over the first five days of May 2008 14,326 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 17% in their fifties.

My video camera only gets dragged out for foreign holidays, and actually I haven’t copied the tapes to video for the last three years… With the new DiGa, though, there is a digital in from cameras, so perhaps I can get the dubbing done quicker?

With the new AdSense for YouTube features, perhaps I should dust it off and start shooting cat videos?
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Perhaps it’s just the types of web sites I frequent (Slashdot and digg, for instance), or perhaps it’s just that people are reluctant to admit to filesharing even semi-anonymously, but this recent survey conducted by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into movie watching showed P2P the second least-popular way for obtaining movies.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 16th of May 2008 1,087 members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.4% of the sample was male, 12.1% were in their teens, 22.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 28.0% aged fifty or older.

“Better than free” is the basic strategy pursued by many paid services that compete with pirated content. Apple’s iTunes, in particular, mostly achieves this goal, but other systems I have used, especially from large Japanese corporates, are nowhere near realising this. I’ve not personally used any of these mail-order DVD rental systems, as most of my film needs are met by either the cinema or stuff recorded off cable.

I’m not sure why video tape-only people were eliminated from Q2, and finding out the patterns of usage of tape and DVD (and hard disk, for that matter) would have been interesting. Perhaps if one pays to obtain the full results one can learn these details. I’m also a little surprised that Video On Demand and acTVila were not distinct answers for Q2.
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Japan’s home-grown YouTube, the member-only Nico Nico Douga that charges for peak-time usage and doesn’t allow embedding in other web sites is still trying to catch up with the aforementioned YouTube. To see what the Japanese think of the site, JR Tokai Express performed a survey reported on by japan.internet.com into Nico Nico Douga.

Demographics

On the 8th of April 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor pool employed in either the public or the private sector completed an internet-based questionnaire. 80.0% of the sample was male, 12.1% were in their twenties, 37.6% in their thirties, 37.9% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties.

On the 1st of April this year Niwango Inc, the operators of Nico Nico Douga, signed an agreement with JASRAC (the Japanese Society of Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers) to the effect that they would only allow users to upload videos of themselves performing copyrighted material, but not surprisingly infringing material is also still making its way onto the site.
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Although previous surveys have shown that 4% used P2P software at the time of the survey, this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Research on the use of audio-visual contents on home computers shows a slightly different picture.

Demographics

Between the 28th of February and the 3rd of March 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor panel with a computer at home completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, with 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 13.3% in their fifties, and 6.7% in their sixties.

Note that Marsh Research are a new-to-me research company.

I don’t bother downloading music myself, but I may or may not have occasionally downloaded a movie or two of dubious provenance, not that I actually ever have time to watch them! Having said that, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is playing in the background as I translate this article.
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My cell phone camera sees rare use, mostly when wifey borrows it to take pictures of food or me when she’s forgotten her own phone. One use she puts her own camera phone to is taking a photograph of the weather forecast on the television then forwarding it to me. I’m sure there must be better ways of letting me know what the weather will be like, but since we can send mails for free, it works for both of us! To see what the average person gets up to, MyVoice looked at the use of mobile phone still and motion cameras.

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2007 13,602 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 17% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

Both wifey and I have memory cards for our cell phones; in fact, she has a one gigabyte micro SD card which finds more use as an extra card for our main digital camera, but neither of us use the card for day-to-day storage, only for exporting (never importing!) photographs. Indeed, it would be interesting to find out how other people use their memory cards.
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Perhaps mainly due to the ease of embedding video into third party web pages, YouTube still has a lead of over three-to-one over its nearest competitor in the Japanese video sharing league. To find out more about how people use these sites, japan.internet.com reported on a survey by Cross Marketing Inc that looked at video file sharing.

Demographics

Over the 8th and 9th of August 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing Inc’s online monitor group completed a private online 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.

If you want to look at Nico Nico Douga - oops, I’ve just looked at Nico Nico Douga, and new free accounts are limited to access between 2 am and 7 pm. I think their commenting system allows messages to be overlaid on videos, so if anyone knows the details, please leave a message!
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I’m glad it’s not just me, as whenever we have a video tele-conference at work I always try to hide out of the way of the camera, and just can’t bring myself to look at my own face on screen. I can just about cope with my photo in private, but seeing myself on the big screen is just too much for me! This fact in the headline was one of the interesting facts to come out of a recent survey by Cross Marketing Inc and reported by japan.internet.com on the subject of web cameras.

Demographics

On the 18th and 19th of July 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing Inc’s online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 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, and 20.0% in their fifties.

As a cross-reference, back in October of last year MyVoice looked at video calling on mobile phones, and there they found a similar lack of enthusiasm for video calling on mobile phones.
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japan.internet.com published the results of the latest survey by JR Tokai Express Research, conducted at the end of September into the usage of video contents on mobile phones and other portable devices. They interviewed 330 people from their internet monitor panel. 72.1% were male, 18.8% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

I’m still looking for my ideal video playback device; around iPod Nano size, but with a screen covering all of one face. Battery life would need to be around four hours, or two hours plus external battery pack for emergencies, although two hours is perhaps borderline. I’ll be buying a new phone, a P702iD, which apparently has video playback from SD card, but as to the quality, I’ll have to wait and see. I’d love to be able to download on my PC the latest BBC news overnight and have an SD card waiting for me in the morning loaded with the news sized to the mobile’s screen. There is apparently iChannel that does this for you for a fee, but the transmission charges would make it unfeasable, I fear.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the use of video sharing sites. 1,011 internet users from all over the country completed an online questionnaire; 57.5% of the sample were female, 24.2% in their twenties, 43.9% in their thirties, 23.0% in their forties, and 8.9% in their fifties.

YouTube is apparently a current hot topic of discussion, with over 2 million Japanese visitors reported. My main concern regarding these places is the copyright isssues, as there are many blatant rips of Japanese TV being uploaded, which is illegal regardless of any added value the uploader has attached, for example Lazer Ramon HG’s subtitled adventures!
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In early December NEPRO Japan looked at the usage of video-enabled mobile phone calls amongst the Japanese mobile-phone using population. They surveyed 4,575 people across the country, 59% female, and 42% in their twenties. The participants were self-selected by means of a link available for just one day from the iMode, Vodafone live! and EZweb service provider’s portal web site.

This survey is self-selecting, so the accuracy is somewhat suspect. For iMode users, most of DoCoMo’s new sales are of phones with video calling features, and users of these new 3G phones tend to choose fixed price plans, so use iMode more, thus are more likely to find these surveys, biasing the survey towards the heavy user, I suspect.

Personally speaking, my current phone has no video calling facility, and I have no real desire to use the feature even if available, as mail is usually sufficient, and it’s a bit embarrassing, plus I don’t know what happens about sound quality if you have to hold the phone twenty or thirty centimetres away from your face. Perhaps a headset becomes necessary for proper use, therefore since BluTooth has only now just started appearing in a significant number of phones we may see an increase in users this year?
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