世論 What Japan Thinks

Although the survey is biased towards heavy users of mobiles, this recent survey from Point On Research into mobile wallpaper found a quite high percentage of people willing to pay for dynamic wallpaper.

Demographics

On the 23rd of April 2010 800 heavy users of mobile phones complted a private mobile phone-based survey. The sample was 50:50 male and female, 25.0% in their teens, 25.0% in their twenties, 25.0% in their thirties, and 25.0% in their forties. The exact definition of “heavy user” is not given, but I would imagine as a start it is people who max out their all-you-can-use data plans.

Note that Q1 indicates a bias away from SoftBank and toward au mostly – the usual split is around 45:30:20:5.

Funnily enough, today I saw an ad on my mobile phone and wanted to download a free Sento-kun 3D animated wallpaper, but my ancient phone cannot support it!

Note that wallpaper can function as both a backdrop and an animated screensaver, which explains to some extent the significant amount of Flash.
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Most mobile phones in Japan these days support not just static wallpaper, but also Flash-based animations, although the report by japan.internet.com on this survey from Point On Research into mobile phone wallpaper didn’t actually give any information on the uses of such animations, as the focus was on still pictures.

Demographics

On the 29th of September 2009 exactly 800 members of the Point On research monitor group completed a private mobile phone-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, 25.0% in their teens, 25.0% in their twenties, 25.0% in their thirties, and 25.0% in their forties.

Q1 indicates a very curious demographic; the usual percentages for au and SoftBank are about 30% and 20%, but here we have a huge variation. Does their questionnaire web site not correctly operate on many SoftBank phones? Did SoftBank fail to deliver the request to participate in the survey?
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With just about every phone available in Japan and built within the last two year able to support Flash (the iPhone being one notable exception), this survey from Point On Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, looking at mobile phone wallpaper reveals a significant percentage of people using Flash even as their mobile’s idle screen background.

Demographics

On the 16th of March 2009 exactly 1,000 mobile phone-using members of the Point On Research monitor group completed a private mobile phone-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and feamle, 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. For this survey 47.4% of the respondents were with au by KDDI, 42.0% with docomo, 10.5% with SoftBank, and 0.1% with other carriers. This split seems odd to me – 45:35:20 is the usual ratio, and their own monitor demographics page illustrates a 39.7:43.0:33.4 ratio, so I don’t know what is going on here!

Regarding the headline, overall it is just 6.3% of the total sample prepared to lay out cash for just a background, but looking at it as a quarter of a quarter sounds somehow larger! However, I would add a note of caution that many may not be directly paying, but instead may have a monthly subscription to a themed site (like a Sanrio or Disney site full of static and dynamic backgrounds, email templates and emoji icons, etc) with an all-you-can-eat or points-based model.

My phone just has a boring old static picture.
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infoPLANT recently reported on a survey they conducted into mobile wallpaper. This concerns images for the idle screen on a mobile phone, called 待ち受け画面, machi-uke gamen, in Japanese.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 24th of April 2007 infoPLANT gathered 5,941 respondents by means of a publicly-advertised questionnaire available through NTT DoCoMo’s iMode mobile phone menuing system. This self-selecting sample was 36.8% male, 63.2% female. As noted in an earlier survey, these infoPLANT surveys tend to attract a disproporionately high percentage of people on unlimited usage plans, and those on unlimited plans tend to use pay sites more.

I recently downloaded a cute Rilakkuma wallpaper from a promotion through the convenience store chain Lawson, but unfortunately that promotion has finished so I can’t pass on the URL. However, if you’re looking for some San-X wallpaper for your PC, or want to try scaling down the images to fit your mobile’s screen size, here’s their official web page containing a good number of images of Rilakkuma, Tare Panda, Monokuro Boo, and many others, with not just wallpaper, but also screen savers and calendars.
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