smartphone

How has the Japanese mobile carrier market changed?

This short survey report from MMD Labo looked at the Spring 2021 mobile service provider situation.

The full survey is much more detailed, so if you want a deep dive, please visit their site and purchase the full survey results.

Note that ahamo is docomo’s cheap plan, povo au’s, and LINEMO SoftBank’s, each costing just under 3,000 yen all-in for 20gb data and 5 minutes free per phone call.

In Q2 I’m not surprised that Rakuten is the most-investigated, as they have been flooding the airwaves with exceptionally irritating adverts offering completely free service for the first gigabyte of data port month.


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By Ken Y-N, ago

Smartphone photography and printing

MMD Labo recently conducted a survey into smartphone photography and smartphone photo printing.

I fall into the two or three photos per month, usually food photos that never gets further than Google Map reviews, although I do occasionally upload to my personal Instagram account quality photos like this:

I’ve printed out my own smartphone photos exactly once; it was for my father-in-law’s funeral, and rather than pay 30,000 yen or so for a professional memorial photo for him, we found one on my smartphone and I printed it off at a nearby convenience store for the grand total of 50 yen, and framed it in a photo frame we found lying about his flat…
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By Ken Y-N, ago

COVID-19 and smartphone app usage

The company FROSK, who make the smartphone tool SmartBeat, which analyses application crashes and errors, conducted a survey into smartphone app usage and crashes.

I’m still working at home, but I don’t think any app genre usage has increased. I’m anti-social at the best of times, and being at home there’s no need to email my wife. Work stuff is all on my work laptop, and the occasional Zoom call is done on my personal desktop. I don’t do home delivery, and going to the physical supermarket is about the only exercise I get!

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By Ken Y-N, ago

Money-related apps most crash-prone

A new to me survey company, SmartBeat, recently conducted a survey into smartphone app crashes in the first half of 2019.

I don’t have any regular crashes, and hardly even irregular crashes on my Android phone, so I find it very surprising that nearly half the sample reports weekly crashes, and on top of that certain genres of apps crash daily! Do any of my readers have such troubles?

Here’s an iPhone that has crashed into the pavement…

Iphone Dead End
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By Ken Y-N, ago

Teenage schoolgirls and smartphones, part 2 of 2

Following on from women and mobile games, I now present a survey from Pre-Can Teens Labo by GMO into teenage schoolgirls and mobile phones.

This is another rather large survey with lots of interesting data to consume. Of all these YouTubers and Instagrammers, there are only two I’ve heard of. I won’t touch TikTok, though, as I trust them even less than I do LINE!

Fake News here seems to be neither Trump’s definition, news he doesn’t like, nor the original meaning of deliberately false information shared via web sites made to look like legitimate sources to inflame political debate, but just people posting flat-out lies.
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By Ken Y-N, ago

Teenage schoolgirls and smartphones, part 1 of 2

Following on from women and mobile games, I now present a survey from Pre-Can Teens Labo by GMO into teenage schoolgirls and mobile phones.

This is another rather large survey with lots of interesting data to consume. LINE is, as you can see, the messenger app for not just schoolgirls, but just about everyone in Japan. I avoid it like the plague, though as I don’t trust them with my phonebook, and my wife has the problem that once a corporate account makes contact, it’s pretty much impossible to block them, and even if you manage to they can reconnect.

On the other hand, Facebook seems remarkably low, but I’ve heard in America only old people use Facebook, so perhaps that is a trend in Japan too.
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By Ken Y-N, ago

Women and mobile games: part 3 of 3


This rather huge survey from Kurashi How Labs looked at women and smartphone games.

This final part found a small number of people buying in-game stuff, but even there most just used pocket money. I’ve never paid real money, but my wife borrows all the money I collect from Google Rewards and recently Google Pay cash back to spend on clothes for some dress-up game.

Talking about paying for dress-up games, here’s a screen shot from the grand-daddy of them all, Second Life, featuring two cats sitting in a Japanese style toilet:

Les japonais elegantes 14
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By Ken Y-N, ago

Women and mobile games: part 2 of 3

This rather huge survey from Kurashi How Labs looked at women and smartphone games.

My current game has a handy display of how many days you’ve logged in as you log in, so I can tell you that I’ve been playing for 199 days. The last game I was addicted to, Two Dots, I quit after about a year as I’d basically beaten the game; I’d got three stars on every single level, and there was no new content on the horizon, so I quit.

I’ve seen this game advertised on the monitors in the train, but you probably get put on a list if you download it:


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By Ken Y-N, ago

Women and mobile games: part 1 of 3


This rather huge survey from Kurashi How Labs looked at women and smartphone games and will be published over three days this week.

I’m not a woman, but I’ve currently got just one game on my phone
that I’m hopelessly addicted to! I’m not telling you how long I waste every day on it, but most of the play time is either at home or on the train to and from the office.
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By Ken Y-N, ago

Majority of Japanese have printed smartphone photos

This interesting survey from Macromill’s Honote took a look at smartphone photography, printing, and New Year greetings.

I’ve never printed a smartphone photo; I did long, long ago print out a photo from a feature phone to make my own personalised stickers. I use a third-party service to print out the photo side of my New Year postcards, but I’d love a service whereby I could easily send postcards without knowing people’s physical addresses, just by sending them an invitation through Facebook or whatever.

Here’s some people capturing next year’s postcard image, perhaps:

Yukata-Wearing Girls
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By Ken Y-N, ago