International Telecommunications Society Asia-Australasian Regional Conference Perth, Australia 22-24 June 2003
IS THE INTERNET MOBILE? MEASUREMENTS FROM ASIA-PACIFIC Michael.Minges@itu.int Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) Opinions expressed may not reflect the views of the International Telecommunication Union or it members
Contents • Introduction • Advanced AsiaPacific Economies Overview • Indicators – – – – –
Usage Users Infrastructure Pricing Revenue
• Index • Recommendations
Some of the data is estimated or from 3rd parties. When data only available for one operator, it is used as a proxy for entire economy.
Why measure? • Mobile has passed fixed & Internet use growing
1'000 500
– A logical marriage?
• Non-voice mobile use growing • Commercial / regulatory / social / analytical implications
World telephone subscribers, millions
1'500
Fixed
0 1982 800 600
88
1'330 1'210
Mobile
94
2000
World Internet users, millions
400 200 0 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 Source: ITU.
What is Mobile Internet?
…or accessing Internet from a mobile network?
Browsing Internet from a mobile…
Overview of advanced Asia-Pacific mobile markets • Mature – Taiwan, China first economy in world to have more mobiles than people!
• Mixture of technologies
Taiwan, China
106 89
HK, China
78 Mobile 68 subscribers 68 per 100 67 inhabitants, 62 2002 58
Singapore Australia Korea (Rep.) Average New Zealand Japan
• Trendsetters in mobile data: – Korea (Rep.) launched world’s first CDMA2000 1x 3G network in October 2000 – Japan launched world’s first W-CDMA 3G network in October 2001
PDC 39%
CDMA 30%
Total = 155 million GSM 31%
Source: ITU.
Mobile cellular subscribers by technology, advanced AsiaPacifc, 2002
Text messaging • Not mobile Internet • Most intensely used non-voice mobile application • Possible indicator of potential mobile Internet use – Number of messages – Penetration (i.e., % of subscribers that use it)
• Wide variation in region – Definitions? (e.g., sent & received, ‘junk’ SMS, etc.)
184
Singapore Korea (Rep.)
167 111
Japan New Zealand
24
Australia Taiwan, China Hong Kong, China
17 7
SMS per subscriber per month, 2002
4
Note: SMS = Short Message Service Source: ITU adapted from various reports.
Traffic: Minutes or Packets? • Measure in two ways: – Time (minutes of use) – Volume (kilobytes)
• Few operators publish this data
KTF (Korea, Rep.), Avg. monthly minutes of use (MOU), 2002 200 150 Voice
100 50
9
Data
148 11
0 A M J 31 30 29 28 27 26 25
J
A S O N D
DoCoMo (Japan), i-mode, KB/day/sub
A M J
J
A S O N D
Note: 2002. Data MOU is average connection to wireless data network regardless of charging system, time-based or packet-based. Source: KTF, DoCoMo.
Mobile phone Internet subscribers Subscribers browsing the Internet from their mobile phone (e.g., Wireless Access Protocol (WAP), i-mode) Japan
81.0%
Korea (Rep.) Singapore Australia
45.0%
Subscribing to mobile Internet
78.7% 40.0%
Japan Korea (Rep.)
7.4% 4.8%
Taiwan, China
2.9%
New Zealand
1.4%
HK, China
1.2%
Mobile phone Internet subscribers as % of total mobile subscribers, 2002
Source: ITU adapted from various sources
44.1% Using mobile Internet 32.3%
Accessing 29.0% paid content 16.2%
As % of total mobile subscribers, August 2002
Source: ITU adapted from Nomura Research Institute & Korea Network Information Center
What is an Internet user? Internet users per 100 inhabitants, 2002 Taiwan, China
38.3
Australia
42.7
HK, China
43.1
Japan
44.9
New Zealand
Mobile phone only PC and mobile phone 43%
9.6
48.4
Singapore
54.0
Korea (Rep.)
55.2 0
Source: ITU.
Internet access usage method, Japan, 2002
20
Mobile phone only 22%
PC only 35% 40
60 Source: ITU adapted from Nomura Research Institute.
High-speed mobile
(e.g., GPRS, CDMA2000 1x, W-CDMA) •
Infrastructure indicator – Subscribers to high-speed mobile data services – Coverage of high-speed mobile Internet network
•
Comparability issues – Not all high-speed networks same (GPRS, CDMA2000 1x, CDMA2000 1x EV/DO, W-CDMA) – Some operators count handsets rather than subscribers – A subscriber may not be using high-speed features – Subscribers may be pay as you go
CDMA 1xEV/DO
2400
W-CDMA stationary W-CDMA moving
2000 384
CDMA 1xRTT
144
GPRS
114
CDMA
64
PDC-P
28.8
GSM/PDC Source: ITU.
9.6
Theoretical data transmission speed kbps
High-speed mobile Subscribers & Coverage
Korea (Rep.)
51.1%
Japan
6.6%
Singapore
6.4%
HK, China New Zealand Taiwan, China
2.7%
High-speed Internet 2.3% subscribers as % of total mobile 1.6% subscribers, 2002
Australia 0.3%
Source: ITU adapted from various sources.
100%
97
100 97 99 99 93
90 80%
75 60
60%
PDC service launch Mar. 1993
40% 20%
100
22 22
FOMA launch 0% Oct. 2001
26 FOMA outdoor coverage PDC outdoor coverage
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Years after the launch of service Source: ITU adapted from DoCoMo.
Mobile data revenue • Most popular metric among operators with almost all publishing • True mobile Internet use is often not separated from message revenues • May reflect high prices rather than intensity of use • Two basic indicators: – Mobile data revenue as % of total mobile revenue – Average Mobile Data Revenue Per User (ARPU)
Japan
19.3%
Singapore
13.0%
Korea (Rep.)
10.6%
Australia
10.0%
New Zealand
5.0%
Taiwan, China
2.9%
HK, China
2.5%
Mobile data service as per cent of total mobile revenue, 2002
Source: ITU adapted from various sources.
Mobile pricing • Two ways of pricing: – Time (length of period logged on). Generally used for low-speed access. – Volume (amount of data transferred). Generally used for high-speed access.
• Can also have a subscription plan or “pay as you go”.
New Zealand Taiwan, China
$13.19
$8.52
Australia
$8.07
HK, China
$7.69
Singapore Korea (Rep.)
One hour of WAP, circuit $5.23 switch access, US$, $3.60 2003
Source: ITU adapted from various sources.
High-speed mobile pricing 1 Megabyte (MB) is approximately equivalent to: – 250 emails (of 200 words) – 20 emails with attachments – 20 pages of spreadsheets – 10 web pages Source: Telstra
Hong Kong, China
$12.82
Japan
$12.46
Australia Taiwan, China
$10.87 $5.78
Korea (Rep.)
$3.90
New Zealand
$3.70
Singapore
$2.32
Highspeed mobile Internet pricing, per MB, US$, 2003
Source: ITU adapted from various sources.
Mobile Internet Index • Which economy is doing best overall in mobile Internet? • Helps to overcome limitations of different data by using a number of variables • Indicators: – Mobile to Internet Ratio – SMS/sub/month – Mobile telephone Internet users ratio – High-speed mobile subscriber ratio – Mobile data revenue ratio
• Mobile Internet Divide
Korea (Rep.) Singapore Japan New Zealand Australia HK, China Taiwan, China Source: ITU.
9
Mobile Internet ranking 12 Total score (Lower = Better) 13 24 25 27 30
Recommendations • Agreement on standard list of mobile Internet indicators and definitions • Government ICT agencies need to collect and disseminate the data (only Hong Kong, China and Taiwan, China publish limited mobile Internet statistics) • National statistical offices should incorporate mobile Internet questions into ICT surveys • If mobile is important, then why not PDAs and notebooks? If wireless important, then why not 802.11? So should WiFi also be included as a mobile Internet indicator (e.g., number of users, number of hotspots)?