Cellphone mastery low in Japan

This is a bit of a short, but sweet, survey conducted by BlogCh into cellphone function ease of use.

Demographics

Between the 25th and 28th of July 2008 547 people (the selection method was not mentioned) completed a survey. 52.3% of the sample were male, 21.1% in their twenties, 45.9% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, and 8.8% of other ages.

I liked this survey because one of the selling points of the SoftBank iPhone is the ease of use, which the foreign press often stresses whilst mentioning the difficulty of Japanese cellphone operation. The results here highlight few are really comfortable with their phones. I was surprised by Osaifu Keitai (RFID-based contactless payment) being the hardest to use, as it’s just a touch on the sensor and you’re done. However, I think there is also the aspect of difficulty of understanding what exactly it is mixed in with these results.

Another reason I liked this survey was the use of Japanese to describe the degrees of confidence. I’ll leave them untranslated.

Research results

Q1: Do you think you’ve mastered the functions of your cellphone? (Sample size=547)

	All	Male N=286	Female N=261
バリバリ (baribari) 120%	4.8%	5.6%	3.8%
がっつり (gattsuri) 100%	4.8%	5.6%	3.8%
なかなか (nakanaka) 80%	16.3%	14.7%	18.0%
そこそこ (sokosoko) 50%	32.5%	34.3%	30.7%
ビミョー (bimyou) 30%	27.2%	25.9%	28.7%
サッパリ (sappari) 0%	14.4%	14.0%	14.9%

Q2: Which of the following functions are difficult? (Sample size=547, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=286	Female N=261
Osaifu Keitai	39.1%	37.1%	41.4%
Applications	30.7%	30.8%	30.7%
Music player	26.3%	29.4%	23.0%
Internet	16.1%	18.9%	13.0%
One Seg television	14.6%	13.3%	16.1%
Email	13.9%	17.1%	10.3%
Setting wallpaper, ringtones, etc	11.7%	12.6%	10.7%
Voice calling	10.6%	12.2%	8.8%
Other	15.2%	14.0%	16.5%