Fiber Optics Highly Desired for Broadband Service: Survey
July 23, 2001 (TOKYO) -- More and more users are subscribing to broadband services as a means to access the Internet.
The share of asymmetric digital subscriber lines (ADSL) increased to 8.1 percent from households, showing a significant increase from 0.3 percent. Flat-fee ISDN services, including "Flet's ISDN," also have exhibited an increase in market share to 24 percent.
Nikkei NetBusiness issued these findings from its "Internet Active User Survey," a questionnaire-based market survey conducted every six months since December 1995.
The item "Fiber Optics" was for the first time listed as an option to the query on "your choice of Net connection services in the future." The result was that it won the respondents' interest, appearing at the top spot with a rate of 51.7 percent (refer to Fig. 1).
It also was found that the rate of respondents who had experienced electronic commerce had reached 70.1 percent, an all-time high (refer to Fig. 2). Even beginners with eight months of Internet experience or shorter have experienced e-commerce, and at a higher rate of 46.2 percent. Despite rumors about Net-related businesses being in the doldrums due to the collapse of the Net bubble economy, Internet users all over Japan have a definite growing interest in purchasing goods through e-commerce.
The survey was conducted on the Web site of Nikkei NetBusiness , and it asked participants to furnish an answer to each of 50 multiple-choice questions. The number of total responses was 14,222, and the effective responses were 14,108, excluding void answers.
CATV, ISDN Popularity Peaks
Asked what access is used, ISDN earned 40.3 percent of responses (including services offered without fixed charges), telephone lines 31.2 percent, and cable Internet 16.1 percent. The answers supporting ADSL stood at 8.1 percent, which is still a small figure, but it is expected that its share will rapidly increase in a few years.
For example, Yahoo Japan Corp. will start to provide its ADSL service, "Yahoo! BB," for a fee of 2,000 yen to 3,000 yen in August, and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corp. (NTT East) and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone West Corp. (NTT West) also will mark down the price for their ADSL services to 3,800 yen.
Responding to a question about the future choice of Net connection services, 50 percent or more of users have shown their longing for wide deployment of optical fiber cables. By contrast, the popularity of CATV Internet has dropped sharply from the former response rate of 31.7 percent to the recent rate of 12.2 percent. Similarly, fixed-rate connection services using ISDN lines have lost support from 11.4 percent to 4.1 percent. Those figures simply reveal that most Internet users are not satisfied with ISDN or CATV.
The response rate for ADSL as a future choice, which was 17.9 percent, showed a sharp decrease from the last surveyユs 34.1 percent, but this trend is seen as an offset to the significant increase in the number of actual users of ADSL services.
Women's Rates Increase All the More
As for questions on e-commerce or online shopping, the number of users who have participated in e-commerce has reached a record high.
When analyzing it according to gender, the percentage of women with e-commerce experience has surpassed that of men, as was observed in the previous survey: 70.7 percent for men and 71.7 percent for women. Especially among the middle-aged, from 41 to 55 years old, a rate of female e-commerce users is significantly larger than the men's rate.
Respondents also revealed what goods they purchased online most recently, and a "PC" turned out to be the number one item, with a buy rate of 14.2 percent, the second is "foods" with 13.4 percent, and "clothing" is remarkably in big demand, taking fourth place at 9.8 percent. The third highest is "books and magazines" at 12.1 percent. Counting only women's responses to the same question shows "foods" as the number one item at 20 percent and clothing at 19 percent, with housewares loosing the lead at 8.7 percent. Each rate of women having purchased housewares, health appliances/health foods, or flowers/leafy plants is nearly twice as large as the corresponding men's rate. Buying behavior of women has transformed goods other than those in conventional killer categories into vendible commodities on the Internet.
Means of Settlement are Diversified, Distinguished
In this survey, "pay by card" as a means of settlement accounted for 34.8 percent of answers, including placing orders by fax or telephone by credit card number. On the other hand, electronics settlement has fallen into disfavor, from 10.9 percent in 2000 to 2.9 percent this year. So, electronics settlement for exclusive use on the Internet seems to no longer be needed.
At the same time, users tend to distinguish the means of settlement depending on the amount to be paid, while basically relying on credit-card transactions, as there is a share increase in each of the various means such as remittance and postal transfer, payment on delivery, and settlement through a convenience shop.
Electronics Direct Mail is Appealing to Older People
Analysis of responses to a question on mobile computing showed that there is a steady increase in the number of users accessing the Internet from a mobile terminal. By asking the "state of using a mobile data communications terminal," it is found that 63.1 percent of users are actually using some kind of mobile terminal. The rate was 51.9 percent two surveys ago, and 59.2 percent in the last survey.
Mobile equipment is used more by users in their twenties to forties. In terms of future mobile equipment, the largest hopes are placed on "FOMA," the next generation of cellular phones of NTT DoCoMo Inc. However, expectations for its use are not so high at 27.7 percent.
From responses to a question on marketing issues, there appears to be a decline in banner advertising. Focusing on two types of users -- those who are clicking banners more often than before and those who are doing so as often as before -- the total ratio in this survey is down to 51.5 percent from a little over 57 percent in the last two surveys.
In terms of direct mail sent through e-mail systems, the answer, "Have received one and it looks convenient, providing a lot of interesting contents," was chosen by 14.6 percent of respondents aged 20 or younger, but the percentage increased along with the age of respondents. For example, it reached 27.2 percent for those aged 60 or older. Respondents who chose the opposite answer, "Have neglected it in most cases," accounted for 49.8 percent, less than half of all cases. Thus, electronic direct mail seems to be effective in advertising to older people.
Figure 1: Broadband Service Most Wanted in the Future
Figure 2: E-Commerce Experience
Related story: Most Internet Users Possess E-Commerce Experience: Survey
(Katsuhiko Sasada, Associate Editor, Nikkei NetBusiness) |
