Online market researcher Info Plant conducted a survey of 20,046 i-mode users (male 34.6%, female 65.4%) on use of the Internet between July 28 and August 4. Of the respondents, 80.2% use a PC to access the Internet. Of the company owners, people in management positions, and students, more than 90% access the Internet from a PC.
As the use of mobile cameras has spread west from Japan, it has been the dark side of photo-messaging that has grabbed headlines. A tsunami of moral panic has followed the adoption in Europe and the US of camera mobiles, focusing mostly on their lewd, pornographic potential or the simple invasion of privacy.
The next five years will see a dramatic slowing of worldwide cellular subscriber growth, reports In-Stat/MDR. However, despite the fact that there has been a lot of fuss about the “catastrophic slowdown” in subscriber growth, there will be more than 931 million new subscribers over the next 5 years.
Nobody may be willing to bet who TDSAT will crown king, GSM or CDMA, but on the global stage, GSM has checkmated CDMA. Latest numbers from UK-based EMC, the world’s leading provider of specialised market intelligence on wireless communications, confirms a whopping 81% of new mobile subscribers worldwide opted for GSM in the first quarter of 2003. By contrast, global appetite for CDMA appears to have dwindled, accounting for a mere 13% of incremental global mobility subscriptions.
KTF Co, the No.2 mobile operator, said earnings fell about 4.5 percent in the second quarter of 2003 because of higher interest payments and one-off charges. Smaller rival LG Telecom saw its net profit plunge 57 percent because of higher operating costs.
Vodafone Chief Executive Chris Gent steps down next week after more than 17 years at the mobile phone titan, lowering the curtain on the last of the old guard of Europe’s shaken telecoms industry. Gent, 55, is one of the few chief executives whose reputation remains largely unscathed in a market where heads rolled and big-name firms sought financial rescue after one of the most dramatic share price falls on record.
