Japanese send only one or two (MMS) pictures a month

Interesting, from The Financial Times. An article entitled Asia viewed as model for delivering on data, which claims that even in Japan, mobile users are not sending many MMS over the network. This contradicts a report on the Japanese market which was so promising, stating SMS was declining in favor of MMS. cf In-Stat reports decreasing Short Messaging Service in Japan due to MMS

"Operators are hoping that picture messaging will take off in much the same way as text messaging. But the picture so far is mixed. Japan leads on picture messaging with the highest camera phone penetration in the world. Indeed users have become so snap-happy that some are using their handset as their main camera device.

The disappointing news for carriers, however, is that the Japanese send only one or two pictures a month, preferring instead to show friends and family the screens on their phones when showing off their pictures."

I find this to be true where I live (Switzerland). It's just too expensive to send MMS (over 3 times the cost of sending a text message). Several months ago when I asked him over the phone, Swisscom spokesperson Christian Neuhaus said the ratio was about 3 MMS sent for 30 SMS.

emily | 6:08 PM | Random Stats |
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