Spring is almost here and WeatherNews Japan is gearing up for another Hanmi season with their so-called Sakura Simulator application. Tracking the progess of magic blooming across the country aided by legends of regular users – updates via mobile naturally – along with route map suggestions for where some of the best places are to have a picnic.. wOOt!
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology released the results of their “investigation about use of a child’s cellular phone” survey which was conducted late last year. With replies coming from a total of 10,448 people, ranging in age from elementary school through high school, it’s a wide ranging report with a significant amount of user data, all in Japanese. It’s a real eye-opener on mobile youth usage behavior so we cranked out a quick machine translation, to cover the key points, after the jump.
According to this article on the Mainichi Shimbun, National Police Agency figures released for 2008 show that over 63 percent of calls for emergency services in Japan come from mobile phones. Results showed that a total of 5,165,795 calls were made from mobile phones, up 1.5 percent from the same period the previous year and the biggest year-on-year increase for the period.
In order to trace the source of mobile phone calls, which are harder to track than land line calls, police in 21 prefectures, including the Metropolitan Police Department, have introduced location data reporting systems, with police in 10 other prefectures, including Aomori, planning to buy similar systems by the end of June this year.
The folks at Ktai Watch ran an open to all readers online poll from December 19 – 25th for best handset model of 2008. They managed to collect about 3,000 votes in all and have listed the top 50 Here.
The 931SH by Sharp for SoftBank Mobile topped the list with Fujitsu’s F-01A for DoCOMo coming in 2nd place. So, “What about the 3G iPhone” – we can just hear you screaming that from all over the world – well, it easily took top spot in the Smartphone section with over 60% of the votes 😎
Our Very Best Wishes to Everyone for 2009!
According to this press release, a new paper written by Prof. Philip Sugai and Prof. Donghun Kim, both professors at the International University of Japan, consumers to mobile content are more loyal to those sites than subscribers to the same content accessed through the Internet. This research surveyed more than 400 PC and mobile phone subscribers in Japan, and tested their loyalty by finding out how much they would be willing to pay to remain loyal to their current mobile or PC content sites in light of a series of other competing offers.
Since 1998 the CIAJ has conducted an annual study of mobile phone use in Japan and has released this year’s survey results. This report strives to capture the most recent user trends and has added topics which might forcast growth demand in the domestic market, including: handset replacement cycle trends after the implementation of the new purchasing plans, ownership of multiple devices and consumer interest in new services and functions, such as video use. The full report is available Here.
