China’s mobile revolution: the rise of 3G technology

It was, to say the least, an unusual brand-recognition campaign. Amid the ruins of towns and villages of Sichuan province, the big Chinese telecoms operators had set up shop alongside rice kitchens and rows of blue tents to provide a service as vital as food and shelter. The Times Online reports.

"The mobile phone came of age in China last month when a devastating earthquake ripped through Sichuan province. Its vital role showed why the Chinese government has recently ordered a radical restructuring of the telecoms industry to prepare for the next generation of technology.

Victims used their phones to call for rescue, soldiers used civilian networks to organise supplies, families used text messages to exchange news of survival or loss and an increasingly angry group of citizens spread word of protests against corruption and lax building standards. The national conversation kept going thanks to a military-style logistics operation by the rival phone companies."

Read full article

In Japan, Cellphones Have Become Too Complex to Use

An interesting read in Wired on what Japanese consumers want from their cell phone: multiple and complex features.

"There are tons of buttons, and different combinations or lengths of time yield different results,'" says Koh Aoki, an engineer who lives in Tokyo.

... Japan is a culture of spec sheets. When consumers go to electronics stores to buy a cellphone, they frequently line up the specifications side by side to compare them before deciding which one to buy.

Experimenting with different key combinations in search of new features is "good for killing time during a long commute," Aoki says, "but it's definitely not elegant."

So it's unclear whether Japanese consumers will ditch their complicated cellphones for Apple's easy-to-use iPhone, which will be sold in Japan by SoftBank by the end of the year.

Japan's Bloggers: Humble Giants of the Web

Compared to the English-speaking world, the Japanese have gone blog wild, writes The Washington Post. They write Web logs at per capita rates that are off the global charts.

"Although English speakers outnumber Japanese speakers by more than 5-1, slightly more blog postings are written in Japanese than in English, according to Technorati, the Internet search engine that monitors the blogosphere.

By some estimates, as much as 40 percent of Japanese blogging is done on mobile phones, often by commuters staring cross-eyed at tiny screens for hours as they ride the world's most extensive network of subways and commuter trains.

Blogging in Japan, though, is a far tamer beast than in the United States and the rest of the English-speaking world. Japan's conformist culture has embraced a technology that Americans often use for abrasive self-promotion and refashioned it as a soothingly nonconfrontational medium for getting along.

Bloggers here shy away from politics and barbed language. They rarely trumpet their expertise. While Americans blog to stand out, the Japanese do it to fit in, blogging about small stuff: cats and flowers, bicycles and breakfast, gadgets and TV stars. Compared with Americans, they write at less length, they write anonymously, and they write a whole lot more often.

Cellphone trend on the rise in China

E-mail has become the new snail mail for many Chinese as they turn to the immediacy of text messages on cellphones and instant messages on personal computers.

The most affluent and educated use e-mail, but by and large people here rely much more heavily on the shorter, faster and more conversational methods of electronic communication .

E-mail here is treated with the same disdain as the telephone answering machine, said Guo Liang, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. "You won't have a direct response; you have to wait," he said.

During the mid-autumn festival, people here exchanged 2 billion short message greetings and well-wishes in a single day.

... As with all other forms of communication in China, the government is watching. Some Chinese say officials expanded censorship over phone messages after the 2003 SARS epidemic, in which millions of text messages were sent alerting people to the virus and exposing a national cover-up.

"Once in a while, you'll get friendly reminders from the public security bureau," Ogilvy & Mather's Kuo said. "You always know what the event is that they're referring to, but they're very elliptical about it, reminding you not to spread rumors."

[via China Post]

Links to related articles on the death of e-mail

Guangdong Mobile Offers Free Telephone Service To Migrants

File under nice. Guangdong Mobile, China Mobile Communications Corporation's Guangdong branch, has launched its "Appreciation to Guangdong" program, a series of activities including 15 minutes of free long-distance call service for each migrant worker in the province every weekend. China TechNews reports.

" Migrant workers who don't have a mobile phone can come to Guangdong Mobile's Communication 100 Service Halls to make their free calls, while those who have mobile phones can enjoy the free service with a Shenzhouxing card. ... Guangdong Mobile will also arrange traveling service vehicles next month from which the migrant workers can make their calls.

In addition, Guangdong Mobile says that it will build 500 Communication 100 Service Halls to provide free internet service for migrant workers."

Chinese charging station, an evolving business model

Pictured left, a charging station seen in many Chinese cities, selling power for cell phones. via Lunch over IP in an article on evolving business models.

Over 420 million Chinese have cell phones, but in many areas electricity supply is non reliable. So this company, for a modest fee, lets people plug in their phone and charge the battery

Soon after starting the business, they noticed that while the phone was plugged in, the clients were hanging around, waiting for the battery to be at least partially recharged, and they figured that they could exploit that idle time by displaying advertising and other commercial content on screen placed on top of the booth.

... The hotel, restaurant or shopping mall hosting the charging station has the option of sharing in all the revenue streams or simply taking the charging fees and allowing the operator to take all the advertising related revenues."

Related:

-- Street Charging Services in Uganda - Jan Chipchase reports on shared phone use in Africa and brings to light what we never even think twice about, how easy it is for ur to charge our cell phones and how in some parts of the world, access to power requires major ingenuity.

-- Access to Power, Phone Charging Services - future perfect shows how cell phones get recharged in Soweto.

-- Romania. Five mile walk to recharge phones - Mobile phones have become popular in a remote Romanian village - even though users have to walk five miles to recharge them

Telephone cafés in China expanding

China Tech News reports on China's growing number of "Telephone Cafés".

These "cafes," which are similar to Internet cafes, provide an ideal place for people from all walks of life to economically make long-distance calls to their families in a quiet, friendly atmosphere.

They are owned by Jinan Yinquan Technology Company, who today has 77 facilities in operation. Jinan Yinquan now services four provinces and 23 cities with Shandong Province its primary base of operations.

Above picture is the storefront of an Internet Café from Virtual China. Couldn't find any images of Telephone cafes.

Mobile commerce seen as future for Japan retailers

Japan's $30 billion e-commerce market is one-fifth of the size of the market in the United States, reports Reuters, but the $3.5 billion mobile commerce, or m-commerce, market is flying ahead of other developed markets and is expected to show explosive growth in years to come.

... "The habit of buying items such as accessories and supplements through Web sites via cellphones typifies a growing trend in Japan, where mobile phones serve a multitude of purposes, such as credit cards, portable music players and train tickets.

Last year, the number of people using cell phones for Internet access exceeded personal computer users in Japan. According to government data, 80 percent of e-commerce by teen-agers aged 15-19 was done on cellphones in 2005.

The size of Japan's mobile commerce market more than tripled from 2002 to 2005 to reach $3.5 billion.The mobile commerce market in the United States and Canada combined is expected to reach only 75 percent of that size by 2009.

... The growth of the m-commerce market is supported by a spread of high-speed third-generation phone services. "One of the changes that came with the 3G services is an increase in flat-fee users," said Jun Hasebe, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research. "Impulse shopping accounts for most of the purchases done on mobile phones, and that would not usually happen unless users are on flat fee-based services."

Japan's Mobile Success Explained

Japan's mobile success explained and compared with Europe, an interesting read by Christine Demsteader on Ericsson.com [via All About Mobile Life]

Excerpts:

“In Europe, a mobile phone is still a phone,” says Ericsson’s Atsuhiko Ohkita, senior market analyst in Tokyo. “In Japan, the ke-tai means web access, e-mail, games, and so on – that’s the definition. Voice is just a very small part of the handset’s function.”

...In Japan, operators design service-compatible handsets, and their unique capabilities become the selling point – the internet phone, the camera phone, the music phone, and so on. This synchronized development spans back to the beginnings of Japan’s mobile revolution.

... The Japanese are more advanced than their global peers when it comes to mobile application development and service adoption. But the size of the gap largely depends on the user group.

Ohkita says: “The difference between high-end users in Japan and Europe is perhaps less than a year. But on average, there is a gap of about two to three years. Low-end European users still only use voice and SMS, and don’t want to try web access.”

“In Japan, 75 percent of the most popular mobile content is pure entertainment – games and music – while 25 percent is known as ‘save time’ content,” Ohkita says.

Japanese makers endure handset hell

An interesting article from the FT on the Japanese cell phone market.

"The domestic mobile phone market is no longer rising. That is a clear fact, so each company is suffering," Ben Nakamura, who heads NEC's mobile phone business, says. "Japanese handset makers face a shake-out."

The handset market is crowded with more than 10 manufacturers, ranging from heavyweights such as NEC and Matsushita, number one and two in the market respectively, to smaller competitors such as Casio.

But few companies are able to generate profits from a business where research and development costs are high, product shelf-life short and competition fierce.

"Mobile phones are not a profitable business," concedes Toshinori Hoshi, director of the mobile terminal division of Matsushita's Panasonic Mobile Communications.

Mobile phone penetration is about 70 per cent in Japan and manufacturers have had to introduce ranges of slightly different models to lure buyers.

And with Japanese consumers so keen to get the latest fads, manufacturers have had to provide the most advanced features to remain competitive, Mr Hoshi points out.

Consequently, manufacturers have seen volume sales of each model decline while development costs have remained high because of the demands of consumers."

China is ruled by low and lower-end phones

Telecoms Korea reports that ultra-low cost handsets will sweep the Chinese market, according to BDA China, a Chinese research firm dedicated to telecom business.

"There are a several reasons why cheap phones are increasing in China:

-- The government is fueling competition by increasing licenses to manufacturing handsets.

-- Leading handset makers such as Motorola and Nokia are trying to expand their market by introducing low cost phones, thereby increasing competition.

-- Handset makers increasingly release ultra-low cost phones to enhance their price competitiveness.

The cheap phones are not only the case of GSM but also with CDMA.

BDA China projected that fierce competition over low cost phones will drive up the number of mobile subscribers."

China's Communications Future

Interesting insight on China from World Changing:

"As China continues to urbanize (its urban population having exploded from 19% in 1979 to 40% in 2003), huge numbers of workers are being drawn from the comparatively poor countryside to booming urban job markets.

Qi Wang and his colleague Jonathan Anderson calculated that at least 100 million people now work away from their primary residence, and that number will swell to 200 million by 2010.

Traditionally, Wang explained, Chinese people have very strong ties with their families and hometowns. The family home is a spiritual center. So maintaining ties with one's roots is a very big deal to the almost 10% of the population which is working away.

And providing communication services for that mobile population is in turn a very big deal.

50% already have access to mobile technologies, with low-cost options spreading and the total number of mobile phone minutes used in China going up 20% a year. But, Wang said, while the urban market is exploding, rural areas lag behind, PC penetration in the hinterlands is "essentially none," and there are few if any efforts to develop village technologies like the simputer, Jhai or hole in the wall approaches."

The future is South Korea

Interesting insight from The San Francisco Chronicle on how South Korea is today's world technology leader.

"Pick up your mobile phone and watch your favorite TV show. At home, on your computer, download a feature-length movie in no time at all.

If you live in South Korea, it is an everyday reality to have always-on superfast Internet -- broadband -- both in your cell phone and in your home.

South Korea has managed to leapfrog the United States in both broadband and mobile phone usage thanks to a population density that makes connectivity easier and government policies that promote development.

South Korea also has a culture where people are crazy about playing online games and don't go home after work. Instead, they go to dinner, to karaoke or to a bar -- all the while using their mobile phones".

Lessons from Japanese Mobile Phone Use

For those of us in the West who have so often wondered and envied the immense uptake of mobile voice and internet services in Japan, Mizuko Ito offers a wonderful insight into this particular phenomenon in her paper titled "Personal Portable Pedestrian: Lessons from Japanese Mobile Phone Use". (PDF Download)

"A strongly recommended read, anyone active in the mobile arena (and not familiar with the Japanese tech culture) should be able to take away some valuable learnings.

For instance, I find interesting that the mid-nineties saw a women's "pager craze", which was a precursor for the keitai, the Japanese name for "mobile" or "cell phone". As for the name, Ito says:

"In Japanese, the mobile phone is called a keitai, which might be roughly translated as " a portable" or "something you carry with you". In contrast to the "cellular phone" or the "mobile" which stress technology and function, the Japanese term stresses the relation between user and device."

reBlogged from TheFeature.com.

MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS - THE JAPANESE EXPERIENCE

Mobile phones have replaced computers as the de facto e-mail terminal of choice for many Japanese who are not in technology, finance, engineering or other computer-intensive occupations. This is particularly true for the young, who most clearly prefer handsets to handhelds, according to receiver .

via [ KoBot! ]

An American takes on keitai

This week in Keitai Log, we get an exchange student's perspective on Japanese wireless culture. DesRochers, a Pomona College (Calif.) student, is studying Japanese at International Christian University in Tokyo.

Excerpts

[...] The process of writing keitai e-mails also brings forth another advantage -- the fact that keitai can turn hiragana (the Japanese syllabic alphabet) into kanji (characters that represent whole words). This means that while I'm standing in the middle of a crowded train platform desperately trying to remember the kanji for "Ikebukuro," I can simply begin to type it into an e-mail, and all of the kanji that match the phonetic spelling of Ikebukuro will immediately appear.

[...] As a foreigner to Japan, meeting new faces is part of the daily experience. Entering each person's data into my keitai as we part ways can be extremely helpful. Not only can I take pictures of their faces for their entries, but this process of exchanging information is also the appropriate time to clarify the spelling and pronunciation of their names.

[...] For me, owning a keitai has been simply another way to make the transition between complete outsider and "that foreigner who knows a thing or two about Japan."

Mobile phone revolution boosts rural Sri Lanka

Two years ago, there were few mobile handsets visible at Colombo's Pettah market, Sri Lanka's fresh produce hub. Today, around 75 percent of market workers -- from stall holders to workers lugging sacks of carrots -- have one.

A mobile line rental costs around a fifth of that of a land line, and a sharp fall in handset prices has spurred sales.

"There is a rise in mobile usage in rural areas because of the low cost and because they can carry it with them," said C. Maliyadde, secretary of the Telecommunications Ministry.

But now a boom in the mobile telecoms market is pulling the informal sector into the economy and even influencing food prices, reports Reuters.

Sri Lanka's Central Bank says prices of key commodities such as paddy and vegetables have gone up because of better access to demand and price information thanks to mobile telephones.

"What you see is an improvement in the efficiency of the markets... We can't yet quantify the impact but certainly in terms of access to market information this is a significant improvement," said Anila Dias Bandaranaike, head of the bank's statistics department.

"They are not chatting with their friends but optimising and increasing their production," she added.

Dialog GSM, Sri Lanka's largest mobile network operator is devoting half of its planned investment in the next two years to rural services, and says customers will soon be able to access wholesale fruit, vegetable and grain prices via voice and messaging by simply dialling in a product code."

Cordless Phones With No Frills Are Hit in China

Interesting insight on cell phones and a fast-growing Chinese service called "Xiaolingtong," or "Little Smart" from the WSJ.

"The global telecommunications industry keeps pouring money into futuristic wireless services with mystifying names like 3G, EVDO and WiMax. But in China, the world's largest phone market, people clamor for something much more basic: a simple service based on cordless-phone technology.

There are already an astounding 50 million subscribers in China to Xiaolingtong, including many in big cities like Beijing. This wireless/fixed-line hybrid is little known outside of China and Japan, where it originated about a decade ago.

Most Xiaolingtong phones offer no frills: Users can make local calls and send simple text messages, but they can't "roam" from one city to another. The phones, as small and sleek as regular cellphones, are powered by rooftop-mounted base stations, which are specially equipped antennas that send signals a little more than a mile. That's a lot farther than cordless phones that allow callers to roam as far as their backyards before losing reception".

Emerging Business Applications in the Japanese Mobile Internet

The mobile Internet may have gained popularity in Japan because of cool ring tones and text messaging, but now businesses are finding that using cell phones to track information increases productivity -- and saves money, according to Japan Media Review via Smart Mobs.

"It is estimated there were between 100,000 and 200,000 business people accessing information in corporate databases from their mobile phones as of April 2003.

"The reason for this unexpected turn of events is that screen savers and ring tones -- and the micro-payment services that support these contents -- created a critical mass of users in Japan, which in turn has driven innovation in the market. Improvements in displays, camera phones, application processors, memory and software are improving the performance-cost ratios of business applications "

How Europe Really Differs from Japan

Another insightful article (cf previous post in Picturephoning.com iMode vs. iMode : the difference between the East and the West) by mobiliser.org via Swiss Bitflux Blog, on why Europe's wireless Internet situation is radically different from Japan's - and how the differences are unlikely to disappear until the lead players in the mobile Internet value chain - the carriers - make some radical changes:

-- "Pricing of SMS vs. mobile email is one major differentiator between Europe and Japan

-- The Japanese message lengths are longer (in some cases, 1,000 characters),

-- Address book functionality on handsets is definitely superior

-- In Japan, mobile email is key for mobile marketing and the unofficial webs

-- And on Japan i-mode, lots of people love to get those opt-in mail marketing messages".

Another great blog, blog from Japan, offers a different take on this same article.

-- "Some of Japanese are not familiar to PC. Cell phone is major way for mail and web.

-- Almost of cell phones in stores has camera, it's commonsence for consumers. Lots of People take a shot and mail it on a daily basis, they use it like a chat. This situation has produced new bussinesses and services.

-- Some of cell phones has Video Messaging funciton, but consumers are not as keen as carriers expect. There are difference in speed within consumers as compared to carries or technologies".

American Teens: Stupid or Spoiled?

Douglas Rushkoff for TheFeature.com compares the factors motivating US and UK teenagers to replace their handsets.

The main reason in the UK, according to Rushkoff, is that local phone calls are expensive and access to the Internet is not as prevelent as in the US.

"It's not that American kids don't have cell phones. They do. It's just that they don't have the same need to use their phones for activities that are already being satisfied better elsewhere. After a couple of hours of free instant messaging on the computer every day after school, how much of an appetite could they possibly have for sms, photos or none, late into the night? "

On a personal note, where I live (Switzerland) and from what I see with my fourteen year old son and his friends, they do it all. Watch TV, play video games, listen to music, surf the Net, send e-mail, I.M and send text messages when at home. This seems to all be going on at the same time. They seem insatiable to all these forms of entertainment and communication. And on the go, when they are not at home, they SMS, from town which they are drawn to like magnets, and even from school where they blind-text under their desk at lightening speed. In case you're wondering, my son even has time to do his homework, grades are good and he loves to play tennis and football (soccer).

Related articles previously posted on Textually.org:

-- Why Text Messaging is not popular in the US

-- Top Ten Uses For SMS in the US

Technoloy gets reinvented locally: Study

Geneviève Bell, Intel researcher, has spent the past two years travelling in Asia, to study how people are using technology and has found vast differences between East and West when it comes to what people actually do with their computers and mobile phones, reports the BBC.

"We see all kinds of local reinventions of technology," says Dr Bell, "whether it is people in China using their mobile phones to get the lunar calendar or people using the digital version of the Times of India newspaper matrimonial section to find a spouse."

"More importantly, mobile technology has been adapted to reflect the cultural priorities of each nation, such as their religious faith".

Why are mobile phones so successful? Dr Bell answers to this question are so logical and simple when she looks at Asia and says something I've never read before, yet it's so obviously right: "Cell phones are relatively robust, relatively small, you don't need a desk, you don't need to be a in particular place. And you don't have to be literate to use them or speak English. These are all constraints when it comes to operating a computer," she explains.

Dr Bell is due to complete her research for the chip maker Intel at the end of the year.

A Decade in the Development of Mobile Communications in Japan

In the past 10 years, the Japanese communication industry has seen enormous change. It has transformed itself from a monopoly to a competitive industry and has seen the establishment of a new wireless industry dominated by NTT Docomo. The man who developed the Personal Handyphone System looks back over a decade of mobile developments in Japan Media Review.

A Survey of MobileNet User Behavior

Howard Rheingold in Smart Mobs today has an interesting entry on a website which focuses on Mobile Consumer Behavior in Japan, called MoCoBe.com, and they have just published a report on The MobileNet User Behavior. Their study suggests that in Japan, location-based services are not uppermost in the minds of users.

Texting picks up in the US

Getting Americans interested in SMS has basically been an uphill struggle (cf Why Text Messaging is not popular in the US). Yet, there are signs of a warming as U.S. phones sent 1 billion text messages in December, up sharply from 253 million a year earlier, according to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, reports Delaware Online and this Spring, 2.5 million AT&T Wireless customers cast their votes by SMS for their favorite TV show American Idol.

One of the reasons SMS is so popular in Europe is because it's less expensive than making a voice call, whereas in America, talk is cheap. To entice customers into typing on their cell phones, US mobile operators offer deals which are sure to make European teenagers drool -- always short of cash to pay for their mobile phones bills -- such as 50 free incoming messages and 500 outgoing messages for $2.99 a month (a T-Mobile USA offer). In Europe, each outgoing SMS cost approximately 22 cents and incoming SMS are free.

Top Ten Uses For SMS in the US

According to research from provider of mission-critical Unified Communication (UC) solutions Topcall, text messaging in the US is not just for teenagers. A survey has shown that companies increasingly are using SMS to communicate vital business information to mobile executives, sales reps, field technicians and customers, reports Yahoo News.

The top 10 business applications of the technology so far:

1) Alerting mobile technicians to system errors

2) Alerting mobile execs to urgent voice messages

3) Confirming with mobile sales personnel that a faxed order was received

4) Informing travelers of delays and changes

5) Enabling contract workers to receive and accept project offers

6) Keeping stock traders up to date on urgent stock activity

7) Reminding data services subscribers about daily updates

8) Alerting doctors to urgent patient situations

9) Letting mobile sales teams input daily sales figures into corporate database

10) Sending mobile sales reps reminders of appointments and other schedule details"

From Yahoo News.

The Social Impact of mobile phones

According to The Stanford Daily, posted by Howard Rheingold on Smart Mobs, instant messaging and mobile phones are changing student life in many ways, where students "co-evolve with technology and digital media", according to Fred Turner, an assistant professor of communication who teaches a course entitled "The Social Impact of Digital Media."

Of related interest, ON/OFF, a documentary on the social aspects of the use of communication technologies in a variety of cultural settings. Ethnographic researchers and documentary filmmakers travelled around the globe throughout the year 2002, filming families in Chicago, London, England, Recife and Shanghai. In each city, the families were filmed in their homes, followed to work and to school, and the crew recorded their stories about the impact that mobile communication technologies have had on their everyday lives. More (in French) in Largeur.com.

And a 28 page special report by The Guardian, How the mobile changed the world dated November 11, 2002.

Mobile e-Mail Study

Picked up on Smart Mobs, this interesting report entitled "Technosocial Situations: Emergent Structurings of Mobile Email Use" written by Anthropologist Mimi Ito with Daisuke Okabe. This ethnographic study of keitai users in the greater Tokyo area outlines the social patterns emerging through the use of mobile email, the dominant application for the mobile Internet in Japan.

Growing use of cell phones cause computer illiteracy in Japan

Most teens and young adults in Japan don't use computers to surf the Internet. Instead they use cell phones to access a scaled-down wireless Web. The result: A growing computer literacy problem among Japan's youth.

How can this be in gizmo-crazed Japan? The answer lies in a combination of educational policy, peer pressure, and most importantly, the dramatic increase in the use of Internet-enabled cell phones in Japan over the last four years.

The primary motivation for a Japanese student to go online these days is not to use the Internet, but to get an e-mail address -- far cheaper and easier to do with a cell phone than a computer. E-mail exchanges between high school and college students in Japan today take place almost exclusively via cell phones. Excerpts from an eye-opening article published by Tim Clark in Japan Media Review

Why Text Messaging is not popular in the US

An interesting roundup of answers from the Economist on why America lags behind in sending text messages:

-- "The short answer is that, in America, talk is cheap. Because local calls on land lines are usually free, wireless operators have to offer big “bundles” of minutes—up to 5,000 minutes per month—as part of their monthly pricing plans to persuade subscribers to use mobile phones instead.

-- American teenagers can call locally for hours, for free, by logging on to the internet and using “instant messaging”. "Although IM users are shackled to their computers, IM has the advantage over mobile texting that each message is free". It's hugely popular.

-- "American telecoms regulations encouraged different mobile operators to choose different, incompatible technologies. Only last year did the largest American operators agree to pass text messages between their networks, whereas Europe and Asia agreed on a common GSM standard for the start.

The article finishes with a surprising jab at France: "There is one place in Europe that, on this matter at least, stands shoulder to shoulder with America. That country is France".

According to a recent study, in 2002, 585 million SMS were sent each month in France, or 16.1 text messages per mobile phone user. In America in 2001, only 0.3 SMS were sent per month, per mobile susbscriber.