White Paper for Internet in Japan

What is the present situation of the Internet in Japan, the world second largest commercial market?

The Internet has rapidly increased its presence and importance in Japan, the second largest commercial market in the world. If you mark for the Internet market in Japan and would like to begin your business, you must grasp appropriately how the Internet currently goes in Japan. We provide in this page various information which precisely describes the present situation of the Internet in Japan. These information are so useful that you can make much use of them to develop your Internet business in Japan.

The current exchange rate between Japanese Yen and US dollar is around JPY105.00/US$.

Description

• How widely is the Internet used in Japan
• Statistic information about individual users
• Purpose/Level of skill/Duration/Investment for using the Internet
• Transmission speed/Connection mode
• How are used various Internet services
• Browsers/Mailing softwares
• Amount of annual purchases made via the online shopping
• Commodities purchased via the online shopping
• Payment terms for the online shopping
• Statistic information about industries
• Availability of the Internet
• Transmission speed/Connection mode
• Availability of own domain name/place to settle the server
• Contents of Website
• Availability of the budget for the infrastructure to prepare, manage and maintain the website
• Products/services which the industries sell/reserve on the website for general consumers
• How the website is used in the office/ purpose of the Intranet
• Configuration of the firewall, Experience of being cracked/hacked

Statictic information about individual users

[Purpose/Level of skill/Duration/Investment for using Internet]
The Internet recently has increasingly been used by individual users. Most of those users access "Hobby/Entertainment" websites on the Internet. 94% of them can use information retrieval and e-mail transmission. Duration of access is generally 30 through 60 minutes per day, and the cost ranges between JPY3,000 and JPY10,000

[Transmission speed/Connection mode]
The most used transmission speed is 64kbps, and 80% of users use 33.6kbps and faster speed. Popular connection mode in Japan is ISDN. It is supposed that "dial-up by ISDN" connection will take the place of "dial-up by modem" connection in the future. CATV connection has not been widely used yet in Japan..

[How are used various Internet services]
"E-mail" correspondence is the top of currently available services. Information retrieval about hobby/entertainment articles and general products/service information follows it. The demand of online shopping (particularly, ticket purchase) has highly arisen as future service.

[Browsers/Mailing softwares]
Microsoft products have increased the share occupied in the market for both WWW browsers and e-mail softwares.

[Amount of annual purchases made via the online shopping]
44.1% of Internet users have experienced online purchases. Of them, 51% paid JPY30,000 and more for their annual purchase.

[Commodities purchased via the online shopping]
Male users mostly purchase articles related to computer. Female users are small purchasers. Top articles purchased by them are "magazines/books". The articles which they would like to purchase in future occupy higher percentage than currently available articles. Therefore, it is supposed that the use of online shopping will further increase. "Tickets" is the top of the articles which users would like to purchase by online in future

[Payment terms for online shopping]
The most popular payment method is credit card, which is followed by "bank transfer", "payment of delivery" and "postal money order" in this order. "E-credit", "E-money" and "digital money" have not been widely used yet in Japan.

Statictic information about industries

[Availability of Internet]
In 1998, 69.7% of the whole Japanese industries responded "now available" or "under trial". In 1999, the percentage of the industries who are now using the Internet rose to 80.5%.

[Transmission speed/Connection mode]
The most used transmission speed is "64kbps", and it rises one degree every year. For the connection mode, unfixed-speed leased line at lower price has increased its users.

[Availability of its own domain name/place to settle the server]
Two third of the whole Japanese industries have already registered their own domain name. Particularly, 88.9% of large companies having 10,000 and more employees have their own domain. More than half of those companies settled their servers outside offices

[Contents of website]
Contents of company website mainly describe "company introduction" as usual. However, "purchase and reservation of products/services"(e-commerce" has recently increased its percentage in the contents.

[Availability of the budget for the infrastructure to prepare, manage and maintain the website]
As of 1999, companies without budget for website preparartion(46.8%) overcome those with budget(36.8%) in the percentage.

[Products/services which the industries sell/reserve on the website for general consumers.]
Individual users would most like to purchase commodities related to computer. This fact shows that the consumer needs and the supply provided by industries don't always match.

[How the website is used in the office/ purpose of the Intranet]
Internet has bee more widely used in industries year by year. As purpose of the intranet use, information/communication sharing, for example, sharing the data base, e-mail correspondence and documents. is ranked higher.

[Configuration of the firewall, Experience of being cracked/hacked]
Industries who configure the firewall have increased year by year. Larger companies have mostly experienced computer cracking and hacking. .