October 20, 2003
Japanese Messaging - A World of Difference
Mike Grenville, founder of 160characters.org, brings insight via Pernille Rudin, into the Instat-MDR report on the Japanese market, claiming that text messaging (SMS) is declining in favor of Multi Media Messaging (MMS) and that the story published in FT, was missing the point.
"SMS has never been the all conquering success story in Japan that it has been in parts of Europe, so it would be wrong to interpret this report as suggesting that the popularity of text messaging in Europe is about to decline, now that more and more European subscribers have cameraphones.
First of all, SMS has only been available for communications between subscribers to the same operator network in Japan. For example, NTT DoCoMo offers Short Mail, which allows 50 Japanese characters per message, between NTT DoCoMo subscribers only.
No surprises then that Short Mail is not as popular as NTT DoCoMo's i-mode e-mail service (usually referred to as “Long Mail”), which allows users to send mail from anyone who has an i-mode mobile phone or Internet e-mail address (which includes people receiving internet e-mail on their mobiles who are with other operators).
Messages of up to 250 Japanese characters can be sent and up to 2000 Japanese characters received.
There is no evidence that this kind of e-mailing via mobile phones is declining in Japan.
And MMS has added rather than substituted for e-mails in this context".
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/picturephoning/archives/2003/10/002012.htm
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