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INTERNATIONAL FEBRUARY 2004 : ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS
February 2004
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Global News Analysis - Asia-Pacific
Mobile internet statistics flatter to deceive If Korea is triumphant in broadband, and Japan in i-mode, does this mean that the Asia-Pacific region is about to become hyperactive in terms of mobile internet usage? Not necessarily, says one expert, Michael Minges, commenting in a presentation at PTC 2004. For one thing, there is a relative lack of statistics and consistent indicators that apply through the region, says Minges, had of the market, economics and finance unit at theTelecommunication Development Bureau at the ITU. Quick search
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For another, the entire question is bedeviled by the definition of ‘what is an internet user?’. Japanese figures, for example, suggest that a substantial proportion of internet users (around 30 per cent) habitually use both mobile and fixed-line access. Of the rest, the subscriber population divides more or less equally into groups who prefer to access solely by mobile phone and those who access solely via PC. Asia-Pacific behaviour may be key for the rest of the world, given that the region is seen as an acknowledged trendsetter, even for mature markets. Amongst its ‘firsts’, says Minges, is that Taiwan, according to the 2002 figures, now has more mobiles than people. The ‘indicators’ question is not going to go away, particularly as they show some surprising, even intriguing, discrepancies. One indicator pointing to the future could be that on the take-up of SMS. “[But] there is a wide variation in SMS usage,” says Minges. In Singapore, the ITU derived an average figure for 2002 of 184 SMSs sent per month per subscriber. Korea runs only a short way behind at 167 SMSs. However, in Hong Kong, the figure drops dramatically to only seven per month per subscriber. This is particularly surprising, says Minges, because Hong Kong probably has the lowest SMS tariffs in the region. Minges suggests that the figures may be complicated by the number of ‘junk’ SMS messages sent to subscribers. Minges says he prefers text-messaging penetration as a percentage of total mobile subscribers as a better guide to success. But even here, he admits, running the same sort of analysis over the data available for mobile internet business produces uneven results. For example, 81 per cent of Japanese mobile subscribers may be signed up for mobile internet, but other indicators suggest that only about half of these are actually active mobile internet users. Indeed, says Minges, a significant number of Japanese subscribers may nominally have internet services but they actually lack the internetenable handset. Even so, the Hong Kong market, on the same sort of analysis, gives low mobile internet penetration figures once more of just 1.2 per cent. Mobile pricing may have been one factor in this: Hong Kong sets the highest data prices in the region (five times those of Singapore). Still, while other countries in region fare better, they do not significantly do so: Australia comes in at 4.8 per cent and even SMS-loving Singapore at only 7.4 per cent. ITU’s Minges says traffic measurements can provide useful statistics but are difficult to analyse as — surprise, surprise — different operators publish different statistics in different formats, including minutes of use and megabytes. At the same time, says Minges, operators remain recalcitrant on publishing genuinely useful data such as a breakdown between revenues for
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mobile data and that for text messaging. Most combine the revenues together before announcing them, perhaps in an effort to protect what they see as sensitive performance figures. Minges says he recommends that governments or regulatory bodies start to publish full and consistent sets of indicators for mobile internet in the way they have traditionally done for fixed line and key mobile statistics to clear up the problem. But even if they did so, we might be back to the problem of what constitutes an internet user. For example, should PDA and laptop access be included in this data? And what about the inclusion of Wi-Fi? In the absence of such a system at present, Minges says he had no alternative but to combine and weight all the available indicators to generate an index of his own. So, who wins the Asia-Pacific mobile internet trophy? On Minges estimation, Korea and Singapore rule the roost. — Stephen McClelland Americas | International | Telecom Flash | Search | Subscription Archives | | Resource Guide | User to User | Career Center | Calendar | Visit Us At | HHEvents | Industry Links | Media Info | About Us | Privacy Policy
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