Mobile Users
Mobile Users

Mobile Users

Cutting Back on Mobile Phone Bills in 2007

NEPRO JAPAN recently published the results of a survey into economising on one’s mobile phone bill. On one day in mid-December of last year they questioned 3,425 people across the three main Japanese carriers, DoCoMo’s iMode, Softbank’s Yahoo! Keitai and au and TU-KA’s EZweb, by means of a public poll available through the main menus of all three carriers’ systems. 44% of the sample were male; 3% were teenagers, 35% in their twenties, 44% in their thirties, and 18% aged forty and over. Similar questions were asked of a similar group around the same time last year, so one can perhaps observe a trend over the past year. Full details with graphs Here.

Create Nail Art on the go with Nail Club

Japan is unique in that consumer studies show that females use the mobile internet more than their male counterparts and you can see evidence of this in the large number of content sites aimed mainly at women. Beauty Walker and howzy !BEAUTY are examples I’ve posted in the past. Add recently announced Nail Club [.pdf], a nail art simulator for the mobile, to that list. You start with a blank canvas (an unpolished nail) and create your own design using 72 colours, 300 types of airbrush, 200 holograms, 100 3D decorations and 300 gems.

93% Subscribe to Mobile Magazines

INFO PLANT recently conducted a nationwide survey during a one-week period of mobile phone users, via the Toku-suru menu on NTT DoCoMo i-mode, and based the following results on 4,987 valid responses. 93.2% of all respondents had subscribed to receive mail magazines on their phones. 39.6% of them have signed up to 3-5 different ones. The largest portion of the users have signed up for 3-5 mail magazines (39.6%), followed by 6-9 (19.1%), and 1-2 (16.2%). Looked at by gender and age, over 20% of those subscribed to over 10 mail magazines were males and females in their 40’s, which was higher than any other age group.

MNP Crashed KDDI Systems

KDDI Corp. was forced to stop accepting mobile phone orders because of a computer glitch caused by a surge in calls on Sunday. KDDI officials said that au’s service computer that handles the orders slowed down at about 4 p.m. on Sunday, and stopped receiving orders. It began receiving orders at about 4:40 p.m., but again stopped at about 5 p.m. because of the computer glitch. The service resumed receiving orders on Monday, officials said.

TCA – November Results Announced

The Telecom Carriers Association has released the official Japan mobile subscriber stats for November (current figures updated on our left navigation bar), with several stunning results. While not surprising – after the first full month of number portability – KDDI posted an impressive gain with a net +325,000 customers. In contrast, this might well be the first time that market leader NTT DoCoMo has ever announced a net client loss: -17,500. Perhaps even more shocking was the fact that their prized i-mode service also shed 56,200 subscribers! The SoftBank Mobile customer count – which is ‘confusing’ – indicated a net gain of +68,700 contracts, however they somehow managed to lose 3,600 subscribers to the company’s Yahoo! mobile web portal.. hmm? Finally, we saw the total number of 3G subscribers in Japan cross the 60M mark as the migration continued, showing gains of well over 1 mn upgrades per month.

Naviblog Featured on DreamGate

Naviblog Japan was featured on Dreamgate, a Japanese government-supported organization, with the motto “Rise Up Japan” and that holds as its mission to nurture entrepreneurship in Japan. Found in the “Possibilities for Mobile Business” area within the “Fast Navi” section, Naviblog was featured in a marathon 5-article piece, the interview and article were authored by Kenichi Nakaya who has been involved with the mobile industry since the early days of the i-Mode. We have Naviblog’s presentation at Wireless Japan 2006 on Video Here.