Recently in Mobile Category

IMJ Mobile has published a market study on Women's behavioral patterns & awareness levels in the Japanese mobile market.

Teenage girls prefer Twitter (63.1%), compared to mixi (54.1%) and Facebook (22.1%). They use Twitter to be up to date on celebrity gossip, to find new music and entertainment information, besides communicating with their friends.

Teenage girls use Twitter to find interesting topics, to kill time, and make new friends. Compared to overall usage reasons of finding information on hobbies (67%), killing time (58%) and searching for useful everyday ideas, teenagers seem to utilize Twitter as a socializing tool.

As for the overall mobile market, 10.5% of the women in their twenties own an iPhone and 5.4%, an Android. Smartphone is more popular amongst younger women as the percentage of Smartphone owners decrease in older generations of women.

Smartphone owners definitely spend more time surfing on the net, as 41% of Smartphone owners have answered to spend more than an hour a day net surfing on their phones, compared to 20.2% of the traditional mobile phone owners.

Docomo is releasing 9 new models of Smartphones this Spring/Summer. There are speculations on the release date of the new iPhone. The Smartphone market is heating up!

Internet market research company, Borders and web marketing guide have released a study on uses of PC SEs and Mobile SEs.

Survey was conducted on 2046 men & women from teenager to people in the fifties.

More than 70% of the people use PC search engines but rarely use mobile search engines.

Only 0.6% of the people uses mobile for their main tool for search.

After the preliminary survey, they have conducted further study on 431 men and women from teenagers to people in the fifties.  They were selected from PC & Mobile Search users of the original survey. 

Out of these people, 92.3% of them use Yahoo! for their PC search, followed by Google at 74.9%.

As for Mobile search, 81.4% of them use Yahoo! Mobile, followed by Google Mobile at 49.0%.

[Thoughts]
From the study, you can see that mobile search is still not very popular in Japan and Yahoo! is still the front runner of the game here.

Continuing from the last entry, (and skipping the middle users for now) is the `Light` user group of the mobile internet user trends, published by Markezene.

Light users spend less than 10 minutes on the mobile internet a day.
Light user group represents about 40% of the total users.
Biggest age group for Light users is Men between the ages of 35~49 (37.2%) followed by Women between 35~49 (25.2%).

They tend to spend a long time researching products before purchase.  They are rather selective about their purchases and tend to choose  quality over quantities.
53% of them are interested in food/cooking and 43% in music. 

Compare to the overall survey results, they are less likely to be interested in fashion (Total: 43.8%, Light Users: 28.6%), entertainment (Total: 39.4%, Light Users: 25%) and new products (Total: 31%, Light Users: 21.4%).

Compare to `Heavy` users, `Light` users are more likely to read news papers (Heavy Users: 65.5%, Light Users: 76.4%), and browse the internet on their PCs (Heavy Users: 70.9%, Light Users: 82.1%)

When it comes to the frequencies of PC & Mobile internet visits, user tendencies show significant differences between 2 groups.  Where only 28.7% of `Heavy` users check PC sites daily, 60.3% of `Light` users do so.  Only 20% of `Light` users check Mobile sites everyday compared to 93.2% of the `Heavy`users.

[Thoughts]
If you are considering on running mobile sites or campaigns, these studies should be a great help on defining your target audiences and deciding marketing tactics.  For me, it is just fun to compare the numbers.

Internet marketing industry web magazine, Markezene has published a market study on mobile internet user trends.

They first categorized the users into three groups:  light users, medium users, and heavy users.

In the first of three reports called "Who is a mobile internet junky?", they focused on heavy users who spend more than 1 hour/day on mobile internet.

Out of 500 who answered the survey, 20% were considered heavy users.


53% of them are impulsive shoppers.  They are eager to compare prices (63%), tend to purchase more than they'd planned (30%), and make expensive purchases if they like the product (39%).  Over all, heavy users seem to be aggressive shoppers.

75% are interested in music, followed by food/cooking (60%) and fashion 59%.

As for media exposures, 90% of them watch TV and 86% read magazines.  Only about 70% of them were PC users.

Only about 29% of them surf the net on PCs, but 93% checks mobile sites everyday.

[Thoughts]
I remember seeing a commercial for a mobile SNS site on heavy rotation last year.  It didn't make much sense to me at the time, but I did know from another market study that mobile internet users and different from PC internet users.  After reading this study, I wonder if it makes sense to advertise mobile sites on traditional media (TV, magazines, etc) than on the internet.

Video Research Interactive Ltd. announced last week the result of the top 30 sites among mobile phone users in Japan. Interestingly enough, this may possibly be the first attempt to monitor the usage of mobile phone users over a certain period of time (1 week).  Althougth the research was conducted on NTT-docomo users only, given it's share and history of providing mobile contents since 1999, the result is worth noting. Anyway, here are the main findings:

- Among F1 and M1 users (just in case you are not familiar with the jargon: F1 stands for females ages between 20 - 34 and M1 for male of the same age range), M1 users tend to access the internet more frequently than their female counterpart both during the week and at weekends. The peak time are around lunch time and before bedtime between 9 to 11 p.m.  Another interesting thing is that for M1 users, their first peak time comes around 9 a.m. but not for the ladies. I wonder why...

- Most popular sites among those users (except for sites run by NTT-docomo themselves which non-savvy users are often led to) are:
1. Yahoo! Japan
2. MacDonald's Mobile Coupon Site
3. Google
4. Rakuten (shopping mall)
5. Mixi (SNS)
Other popular sites include: gree (SNS), livedoor (portal), Amazon, jorudan (train route finder)and blog providers such as Yahoo!, livedoor, fc2 and ameba for both gender. In addition, the following sites were among the top 30 sites: for M1users, asahi.com (news), mapion (map), tsutaya (DVD/CD rental, online shopping). As for F1 users,  coupon sites such as Hot Pepper (restaurant guide with coupons - a great resource for lunch ideas!) and other coupon sites, and Cookpad (cooking recipe search engine) ranked in.

As you can see from the list of popular PC sites below, all in all, people seem to be viewing the same sites on both mobile and PC environment (with a few obvious exceptions, of course!) . With more and more sites becoming available in the mobile format and download speed improving, though, people will surely be spending a lot more time accessing the internet from their mobile phones. (I should welcome this trend, but 
as a victim of this wonderful technological advancement who has recently been given a penalty point from a merciless police officer when I was unconsciously checking my email on my phone when I was going 40kmh in my car, I must say I have some mixed feelings... oh, well. )

<Top PC sites in Japan (Source: Alexa, May 19, 2009)>
1. Yahoo!
2. FC2
3. Google.co.jp
4. YouTube
5. Rakuten
6. Livedoor
7. Ameblo.jp
8. Mixi
9. Wikipedia
10. goo
11. Google.com
12. MSN
13. Nicovideo.jp
14. Amazon.co.jp
15. 2ch.net
16. @nifty
17. Yourfilehost.com
18. BIGLOBE
19. Geocities.jp
20. Infoseek Japan

Posted by K. Fukasawa

japan.internet.com and marsh have released a market study on mobile search trend in Japan.

This study was conducted on 300 Japanese  mobile phone users over 10 years of age.

Of all:

• 40 people （13.3%） often perform keyword searches on their mobile phones. 
• 55 people （18.3%） occasionally perform keyword search on their mobile phones. 
• 131 people （43.7%） have never performed keyword search on their mobile phones.

The total number of people who have performed keyword searches on their mobile phones was 135.

Of those:

• 76 people （56.3%） use Yahoo! Mobile.
• 63 people （46.7%） use pre-installed SEs such as iMenu, EZ top page, and Yahoo! mobile top page.
• 42 people （31.1%） use Google Mobile.

They have searched for:

1. word definition - 90 people
2. regional information - 56 people
3. product name - 49 people
4. coupon - 32 people
5. celebrity and famous people's names - 29 people

[Thoughts]
It seems that one could expect a great coverage advertising on Yahoo! and Google, just as they would on the PC internet market.

Google mobile search results mix mobile pages and PC pages now.

It used to display PC sites below the mobile site results.  Now that they are mixed, a cellphone icon is placed next to mobile sites and PC icon next to PC sites to differentiate the types of the site.

Google's decision was made to display results upon relevancy of the site content, regardless of their platforms.

When PC site is clicked, Google Wireless Transcoder changes the site page into simple HTML, easier to view on cellphones.  It also doesn't cost extra to view a PC page.

The honest opinion is that I wish I could buy a smart phone with a full browser capability!

One of the most frequently asked questions when I meet people in the search industry abroad is "How is the mobile search doing in Japan?" It's true that every quarter Japanese mobile carriers launch many beautifully designed phones with state-of-the-art technologies such as high quality TV screen, electronic wallets, train passes, game applications like this, or this or even this.  It's also true that no matter where you go people are constantly checking their mobile phones, sending messages, watching TV or playing games like they have some kind of obsessions.  But how ripe is the market really? Is it time we invested some marketing dollars to mobile search in Japan? For those of you who are looking for an answer to those questions, I've put together some information on the current state of mobile marketing in Japan.

1. Some basic facts
In Japan mobile phones are bundled with subscription plan and usually not sold alone. NTT Docomo has been the most popular carrier (48%) followed by AU by KDDI (28%) and Softbank (formerly Vodafone) (18%). Each carrier has affiliations with search engines and it is possible to conduct keyword search from the carrier's portal site which is set by default as a top page of the phone.  With more than 70% of mobile users owning 3G phones and care-free flat rate payment plans and full internet browser becoming rapidly popular, more and more users are accessing the internet from their mobile phones.

2. How popular is mobile search in Japan?
According to the survey conducted by MMD (June 2008), 90% of mobile users have used search function, 40% search several times a day, and 40% search with single words first before coming up with various keyword combinations. Further, 30% of users visit up to 5 sites until they find what they are looking for while 20% search for TV programs, words and people's names. Yahoo Mobile seems to be the most popular mobile search engine (70%) followed Google Mobile (52.5%).  Major carries have their official search engines: NTT Docomo has i-Menu, AU has au one and Softbank Yahoo Keitai (keitai means mobile in Japanese). On top of that, Yahoo Mobile and Google Mobile are accessible regardless of the carrier. So in considering mobile marketing in Japan, these 5 mobile search engines will be the key engines to remember. As for the demographics of mobile users, although the age range spans between teenagers to those in their 70s, main users are teenagers and people in their 20s and 30s.

3. Mobile ad market size
As is the case elsewhere in the world, mobile advertising market in Japan is also growing at a remarkable pace. In 2007, its size was 81.5 bil Yen (approx. $900 mil.). In 2008, it's expected to exceed 100 bil Yen (approx. $1 bil). It is expected to grow as big as 250 bil Yen ($ 2.8 bil) in 2011(Seed Planning 2008).

4. Mobile PPC
With the growing popularity of mobile search, mobile PPC is naturally getting popular support.  The major players are Overture (not Yahoo Search Marketing in Japan), Google, Search Teria, J Listing,  Crooz, Keitai Premium Search, i Menu and X Listing. Each publisher tend to attract different kind of crowd. So it is advisable to choose carefully which media is popular among your target audience.

5. Mobile SEO
In many ways, mobile SEO in Japan can be tricker than standard SEO. One reason for that is the co-existence of officially approved (by carriers) mobile sites and unofficial, so-called general sites.  In addtion, each carrier has a different search engine which requires different optimization techniques. When a user conducts a search from the carrier's portal site (which is set by default as the home page), search results are shown as (1) official mobile sites, (2) general mobile sites, and (3) standard sites (non-mobile specific), in that order.  The priority has always been given to the official mobile site, which poses a greater challenge for those without them.  It should also be noted that the frequency of crawling is much lower than standard search engines and indexing also takes more time.

The good news is that there is quite a bit of data available about mobile marketing in Japan.  So, back to the question. Is now a good time to start mobile SEM in Japan? I would say "Definitely!" but I would also add, "only if you know how to do it right!" because it's far more complicated than standard SEM with more search engines and more media, let alone the characteristics of mobile search. Perhaps this is one area where a small help from a reliable local partner could make a world of difference to the outcome of the project. Good luck!

(by Koichiro Fukasawa, CEO)

japan.internet.com and goo reserach has released a case study report on emailing trend in Japan.

Study was conducted on 1,032 cellphone users, teenagers~50s in Japan.

To the question of "Which device do you mainly use for emailing?", the result was about 38% split for both cellphones and PCs.

To the question of "Which device do you have more email addresses registered?", almost 80% of the people answered "Cellphones".

About 65% of the people used emails on PCs first.  Considering the broad age group covered on this survey, the result might be due to the lack of cellphone emailing technologies back when these people started using emails...

I think this is a good proof of how cellphone dependent Japanese people are!

goo Research & japan.internet.com conducted a survey on the Level of Mobile Search usage in Japan.
The research subjects included both genders, teenagers to people in the 50s. 

• 86% of the them answered that they have used mobile searches. 
• Of those 86% (901 people), 46% have said that they have seen ads on their mobile search result pages.
• Of those 46% (414 people), 55% (228 people) have clicked on the ads.