This quite comprehensive survey was published just a few days before the iPhone 12 went on sale, but it’s out now, so please excuse my slightly late translation of MMD Labo’s look at iPhone 12 purchasing opinions.

I’m quite anti-Apple after a few bad experiences with Mac computers; I understand their appeal but I dislike their user interface philosophy of ease-of-use over control.

I’m also extremely ambivalent on 5G as a consumer technology; coverage in Japan is almost non-existent outside a tight area around major train stations, and adverts with all these holograms suggesting flawless telepresence are just unrealisable pipedreams. The extremely low latency is good, though, but I doubt the average consumer will really notice.

Research results

Q1A: Will you buy the new iPhone 12? (Sample size=1,102, by device)

	iPhone users N=550	Android users N=552
Plan to buy	15.6%	3.1%
Investigating buying	30.0%	12.9%
Won’t buy	54.4%	84.1%

Q1B: Will you buy the new iPhone 12? (Sample size=720, by carrier)

	Docomo users N=314	au users N=219	SoftBank users N=187
Plan to buy	6.1%	6.4%	12.3%
Investigating buying	20.4%	18.7%	23.0%
Won’t buy	73.6%	74.9%	64.7%

I’m not sure how the numbers here are derived. The sample was 1,102 people, so Q1A is correct, but 382 people disappear in Q1B, and similar happens with Q5B. There are of course a number of carriers other than the big three of Docomo, au and SoftBank, but these make up only about 10% of the general phone-owning population, and even if you factor out people on feature phones I find it difficult to accept that about a third of MMD Labo’s sample were on the smaller carriers. However, I don’t have any alternative explanation for these numbers.

Q2: Which models from the iPhone 12 series are you investigating buying? (Sample size=339)

	iPhone users N=251	Android users N=88
iPhone 12	72.9%	70.5%
iPhone 12 mini	45.0%	36.4%
iPhone 12 Pro	31.5%	25.0%
iPhone 12 Pro Max	24.3%	12.5%
Don’t know yet	14.7%	20.5%

Q3: Which specific model specs from the iPhone 12 series are you investigating buying? (Sample size=339)

	iPhone users N=251	Android users N=88
iPhone 12 128GB	30.7%	25.0%

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