(keitai-l) Re: SMS vs mobile email

From: Gerhard Fasol <fasol_at_eurotechnology.com>
Date: 11/29/05
Message-ID: <438C023B.3060107@eurotechnology.com>
Great stuff!
why don't you guys write that as a comment on our blog -
I think lots more people visit our website than keitai-l,
so more people will read that in context.!
http://eurotechnology.com/blog/2005/11/sms-is-staggering-success-mobile-email.html

Gerhard
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Gerhard Fasol, PhD                          Eurotechnology Japan K. K.
http://fasol.com/                       http://www.eurotechnology.com/
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Curt Sampson wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Nov 2005, Helen Keegan - BeepMarketing wrote:
> 
> 
>>I don't doubt that our usage will shift more and more to mobile in the UK
>>and Europe, but not until the networks have sorted out their pricing models
>>to make it cheap(er). It's just too expensive right now for the average
>>teenager to run their messaging via their phone when the bank of Mum and Dad
>>are paying for broadband at home, effectively costing Joe Teenager nothing.
> 
> 
> I think that the issue here is that there seems to be a strong
> perception that SMS is some sort of big mobile success for which Japan
> has no equivalant. I've personally been asked by several people not
> familiar with Japan if tabemo.com (a mobile-focused restaurant coupon
> site that I work for) could do SMS and why we don't, and just the other
> day at a seminar related to mobile security someone obviously not very
> familiar with the Japanese mobile scene was asking why SMS "never took
> off" here.
> 
> SMS use is rarer than hen's teeth in Japan for several good reasons:
> 
>      a) E-mail is easier and more fun to use. You can have longer
>      messages, you can have emoji (icons), you can attach ring tones and
>      pictures, and so on.
> 
>      b) You can reach vastly more people with e-mail. I don't have
>      figures, but I'd be willing to bet that you can reach ten times as
>      many people via e-mail as you can via SMS.
> 
>      c) E-mail is far, far cheaper. If I recall correctly, a 160
>      character SMS is something like .10 euro, right? A 160 byte e-mail
>      would be two packets on Docomo, or 2/3 yen, about .005 Euro, 1/20th
>      the price.
> 
> However, that Japanese users send three times as many e-mail messages
> per day on their phones as Europeans send SMS is not even the whole
> picture. SMS is used for a lot of "browsing" and for-pay services,
> a role that is filled by web access here in Japan. So while that
> 1-or-so SMS per user per day includes all access to automated services,
> the 4-or-so e-mail messages per day includes almost none of that.
> (The only automated service commonly accessed via e-mail is site
> registration--sending a blank e-mail to get back a URL that will
> automatically fill in your e-mail address when you register for a site.)
> To get the real picture of mobile usage, you want to throw in all of the
> web browsing used for services for which people use SMS in Europe.
> 
> In short, mobile e-mail and web browsing in Japan getting far more
> than three times the usage SMS is getting in Europe, if you consider
> SMS to be a success, Japan you must consider to be a fantastic, huge,
> resounding success. SMS is small potatos in comparison.
> 
> cjs


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Received on Tue Nov 29 09:24:54 2005