Info Plant Releases Results of Survey on Mobile Phone Usage in East Asia.

Tokyo, Japan, Oct 22, 2005 - (JCNN) - Online market researcher Info Plant has released the results of a survey of 1,200 mobile phone users from Korea, China, Taiwan and Japan, aged 20 or older, on how they use handsets. The survey of 300 users from each country was conducted from August 19 to September 5.

When asked about what kind of service and function is available on their mobile phones, over 90% of the respondents in all four countries replied, "email or short mailing message." Over 80% of the handsets used in Japan support Internet and photo shooting capabilities. Mobile Internet capability is 20% more evident in Japan than other countries. In China, merely 34% of the handset users mentioned photo shooting capability as one of the available functions.

As to what they consider most important in purchasing a handset, the most favored answer was "price" in both Japan and Korea, "brand" in China, and "ease of use" in Taiwan. Also, "photo/video" capabilities came in fifth in Japan and Korea, while they ranked ninth in China, and tenth in Taiwan.

When asked about if they have ever changed their phone models, around 90% of all the respondents answered they have. As to how often, 11.7% of the Chinese users said "every six months or less," and 20.7% "within a year," the highest of the four countries. Of the Japanese users, 63.3% said "within two years."

When asked why they want to change their handsets, among the most often cited reasons in the four countries were "phones are broken," "handsets are old," and "I want more features." In Japan, 14% answered, "on the spur of the moment," higher than Taiwan (6%), Korea (4.3%) and China (4%).

Source: JCN http://www.japancorp.net

Copyright [c] 2005 Japan Corporate News Network. All rights reserved.