Study: mobile social networking usage in Japan

Rakuten Research and Mitsubishi Research Institute have jointly published the results of the online-based based survey (2,400 respondents) examining the usage of mobile services by Japanese phone users. Conducted in late December 2006, the survey mainly focuses on the phenomenon of social networking services (SNS). It found the following:

• The awareness of social networking is 69.8%, understanding - 40.6% and participation rate - 19.6% of respondents.
• The SNS participation rate is the highest among young people in their 20’s and gradually decreases with older generations.
• 48.5% of respondents are aware of mobile SNS, while 21.3% understand the true meaning of it and only 5.5% participate in mobile social networking.
• In contrast with SNS, the mobile SNS participation rate is the highest among young people in their 10’s.
• 78.6% of respondents are members of mixi Mobile social network, followed by Mobage-town (12.8%), EZ Gree (7.7%), and Gocco (3.4%).
• 78.6% of respondents rely on PC-based SNS as their main destination, while see the mobile version of the same SNS as a complimentary tool. Only 6.0% rely solely on mobile SNS.
• Interestingly, when asked why respondents don’t want to use mobile SNS, the seemingly obvious response about cellphone’s tricky operation came only third (33.0%) after not so obvious response of having no time (41.3%) and expected high mobile data fees (39.8%).

Source: Rakuten Research