Sunday, July 22, 2007

"Thumb Tribes" forcing development cell phone business in Japan

As always Japan stands tall in providing innovative solutions when it come to communications, like 300MB download bandwidth to cell phones.
But according to a private survey conducted in Japan by MMD Labo/Update Inc, nearly 50% cell phone owners rarely use their handsets the way they were originally intended--for calls.
Of 9,584 respondents to the poll, conducted by MMD Labo/Update Inc. through a cellphone Web site, were heavy cellphone users. About 97 percent said they had signed up for flat-rate data communication services. Forty-four percent said the number of phone calls they made or received each day was "extremely few." And an additional 35 percent said they talk on their cellphones "less than three times" a day.Added together, it means almost 80 percent of the respondents rarely use their cellphones for calls.

"We were very surprised because the survey showed that cellphones are not functioning as phones for more than 40 percent of heavy cellphone users," said an official at the research institute.

Industry officials said cellphone service providers are under pressure to develop new business models and increase the average revenue they make per subscriber.(IHT/Asahi: July 23,2007)

Read more at Ashahi Shimbun


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