goo Research and Mitsubishi Research Institute have announced the results of a survey on mobile phone GPS usage. Looks like there is still a fair way to go before these services become popular, with only 1.2% respondents using it daily. My expectation is that these types of services will get more popular as more people move to flat rate data plans for their phones.

goo Research and Mitsubishi Research Institute have announced the results of a survey on mobile phone GPS usage. Mobile phone GPS services, through features such as route guidance and 2-D barcode integration, have seen remarkable progress but the survey results stated that "expansion of GPS services on mobile phones is still under-way".

The carriers currently offering GPS services are au KDDI and NTT Docomo.

81.5% - "Not really necessary"

Of those surveyed, 18.1% answered that their mobile phones had position notification functionality. When those users were asked how often they used GPS services, only 1.2% replied that they "use it daily." 19.4% of respondents replied that they use GPS services "when necessary" while a majority of 40.3% said that they had used the service "only a few times."

As for the reason for using GPS services, "current position confirmation" was a high 66.2% while "route navigation" accounted for 23.7%.

In addition, 39.1% of respondents indicated that, while they had a GPS-capable mobile phone, they did not use the GPS functionality. Of those users, 81.5% answered that they did not feel that the service was really necessary. As for the reason for not using the service, 28.9% said that the "cost of data transmission was too high." These results suggest that industry should examine situations for pro-active use of GPS services, as well as pricing.


Emerging needs - "using GPS to ensure the safety of children and the elderly"

In response to a question on what uses of GPS they were interested in, 65.2% replied "route guidance (navigation)", indicating that there is a lot of interest in this type of use. "Current position confirmation", which is already popular, was suggested by 42.9% of respondents while "emergency safety services" (21.4%), "mobile phone (person) location search" (16.8%) and "transmitting your current position to another person" (16.7%) were also identified as emerging needs.

Regarding a service to send the handset location to another person, 43.1% of respondents thought that this service would be useful for ensuring the safety of the elderly. A high 41.5% also considered it useful for ensuring children's safety and expectations for this type of service as one use for GPS services are high.

The survey was conducted among internet users and goo Research registered users over the internet on 13 August. 2098 valid responses were received, composed of 45.6% Docomo users, 20.9% au KDDI users and 19.5% Vodafone users.

Inspired by:
http://www.itmedia.co.jp/mobile/articles/0411/02/news057.html