91% of Japanese will not buy iPhone - oh really?

"Survey: 91% of Japanese Will Not Buy 'iPhone' "- recently we are bombarded with this misinformation on the blogosphere... but let's look closer:
First, dig to the source - from the official iSHARE press release:

調査対象：CLUB BBQ無料メール転送サービス会員

Survey target: members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service

Besides the fact that the sample does not represent Japanese cellphone market its size (around 400 answers) is too small to be taken seriously.

So the headlines should read: “Survey: 91% of CLUB BBQ members don’t want an iPhone”

If you did not skip your statistic classes you should know that the best way to avoid a biased or unrepresentative sample is to select a random sample, also known as a probability sample. A random sample is defined as a sample where the probability that any individual member from the population being selected as part of the sample is exactly the same as any other individual member of the population - and for sure not all of them should be BBQ CLUB members.

PS. Luis Vuitton Survey is an another good example of Japanese misleading statistics causing misinformation in the western world.