I for one make use of the Yomi quite often. (UI Language: English US).
I know plenty of Japanese people, and when addressing mail and documents, it's nice to actually be able to spell their name.
I used to use the field backwards:
First Name: Hiroshi
First Name Reading: 宏
Though, now that I'm more comfortable recognising people's names, I have it now the Proper way, but with reading latinized:
First Name: 宏
First Name Reading: Hiroshi
(the "expected" value would be "ひろし")
But then, I also do the the same with Chinese. Placing their name (in foreign script) in the field, and set the reading in Pinyin, and the name they go by in English under Nickname
First Name: 李安
First Name Reading: Lǐ Ān
Nickname: Leon
People have to remember that many people do have international contacts, and being able to not compromise a hack to enter Contact Information (such as mis-using fields, or just throwing multiple values into "first name") is very very nice.
This is one thing that I wish Google products were able to do more easily, but their world is very English Centric, and other cultures need to wedge into their developer's world; as opposed to Microsoft which used to very heavily take local standards into
account, and make them available worldwide, Because if I move to a country, I still would want to use a English Interface and application, but be able to enter all the fields needed to efficiently work in that region (Such as having the Japanese specific fields
available in English).
I've seen the gamut go by. First, the fields were provided untranslated. Good that it's exposed, as if you know what it is, you can use it. But looked bad. Then, they translated it. But unfortunately now, they are going back to the "one format for
all" which is admittedly easier on a software coding level, but does do away with all the very detailed regional formats that used to be readily accessible (but a stupidly long list), in favor of "It more or less works." (Ie: Now one needs to use "Middle
Name" rather than "Otchestvo" (Patronym) when entering Russian names.