Mobile phone in China

According to the announcement by the Information and Industry Department of China, it's said that the number of mobile phone subscribers has gone up to 431.7 million as of the end of July, 2006 and that the number is still growing. The Chinese government decided to implement the 3G mobile phone regulation "TD-SCDMA" as the industry standard which was developed by China itself. The date of service launch is drawing keen attention. In view of such huge interest in mobile phones in China, a survey was made by Shanghai Searchina on consumers’ attitude and behavior towards mobile phones, including market perception of 3G, in China for common users centered on Beijing, Shanghai and Guantung and the results of the survey has come out. This survey was made regularly every half yearly and it's the seventh. I am so surprised at the amazing increase of mobile phone use in China after seeing the results and I got to know that Chinese users are not expecting brand new technologies.

1. Number of mobile phone owned

Similar to Japan long ago, half of the consumers in China have multiple units. However the rate of consumers who have only one unit is increasing rapidly. I think it means that a lot of the Chinese people are beginning to have mobile phones and as China’s general economic level improves, more of its general population at large can have mobile phones. In Japan lately, there are few people who have multiple units because mobile phone owners have to pay much money for communication charges and packet communication fees. But long ago in Japan, I found so many Japanese using multiple units for both private and work. In these 10 years, the Japanese economy went into a drastic decline and Japanese companies managed to cut costs for telecommunication charges. Thus Japanese workers had to call their customers using their own money. In addition, before email services came out, the telephone service was the most important tool of communication amongst users. But since there are so many restrictions on telephone use in public areas, for example in the train, in the theater, and in the restaurant etc, emailing on mobile phones became highly popular for users. (Email service is not same as SMS.) Japanese mobile phone owners perceive email address as the most important individual information apart from the phone number. That's why Japanese don't want to change email address on their mobile phones even if they change phone number. Recently many transferring email service started. Use of these services enabled users to have many email addresses without multiple phone units. According to the results of the survey, it is said that rich Chinese people tend to have multiple phone units. I want to know how they use multiple units as the situation demands.

2. Phone products

Nokia is overwhelmingly popular in China (30.7%). Nokia is followed by Motorola (21.4%) and Samsung(20.8%). How about Japanese products!? NEC is ranked as 11th (3.24%) and Panasonic (2.3%). The reason for excluding Sony-Ericsson from the ranking is that Sony-Ericsson is a corporate joint venture. Some companies I have never known are ranked before NEC in the list. For example 寧波波導(BIRD), TCL, 夏新(Amoi)and康佳(Konka). I know Renovo and Heier because these companies came to be known in Japan recently. On the international front, Nokia holds a large percentage of the mobile phone maket. But in Japan, Nokia is not so popular. The most popular is NEC followed by Panasonic and Toshiba. So I am sometimes asked by Taiwanese or Chinese who come to Japan to get Japanese mobile phones because these types of mobile phones are not sold in any other countries. In other words, they just want to be proud to have a different type of phone from others. By the way, I use Panasonic P505is by NTT DoCoMo. In my opinion, foreigners want to have palm-sized mobile phones. On the other hand, Japanese want to have mobile phones with large screen because photos on mobile phones or writing emails are very very important to Japanese. It often leads to foreigners saying "Japanese mobile phone is a little large".

3. Payment of mobile phone

Almost 70% of users pay less than 100 RMB (CHY) per month. In particular, users paying 30 to 50 and 51 to 100 RMB per month are the majority. This charge fee not only includes communication fee but also supplementary service fee, such as SMS or downloading sound files. I cannot size up whether this cost is high or low for the common Chinese people. Perhaps I think 100RMB is too small a sum for Japanese users and we pay 7000 or 8000 JPY per month on average. The younger users are the ones paying higher mobile phone fees. This is because the younger Japanese send more emails to each other with mobile phones than making a call. Similar to young Japanese users, most of the young Chinese users are said to send over 40 SMS messages in a day. I don't know the details of usage of mobile phone in China, but young Japanese download sounds file for bell and application files for games, browse the Internet, and send emails with attached photo files by mobile phone. At the beginning of video-conference service in Japan, curious users subscribed to this brand-new service but they got tired of using this service almost at once. The Chinese survey reported that Chinese users wanted to use video-conference or streaming video service on mobile phone in the future.

4. How much can they pay for new mobile phone unit?

About 30% chinese users say they can pay 2000RMB followed by 15% users paying 1500RMB. In comparison with chinese living level, 2000 RMB is so expensive price. Half of users who have over 6000 RMB as income want to buy sophisticated phone unit which costs over 2500 RMB. Knowing the result of this survey, I was surprised at the price of mobile phone in China. In Japan, so many shops linked with telecommunication companies sell mobile phone units for a song because they can get commission charges from mobile telecommunication companies if customers make new contract with telecommunication companies when they buy a new phone unit. It is said that the commission estimates 50,000 JPY per unit. If customers buy a new phone unit without new contract with telecommunication companies, in other words "continuing contract", shop can get only small commission fees from telecommunication companies. Telecommunication companies pay commission fee to shops in consideration of keeping customers from another contract with other telecommunication companies.

It's heard by the survey that a quater of customers have camera-equipped mobile phone in China. In Japan, most of Japanese users have it except but aged people.It is because only camera-equipped mobile phone as standard unit are sold in Japan. All users do not always use camera function in mobile unit.

5. About 3G mobile phone

Since 3G regulation came out, it has passed long time, but I don't know the difference between 2G and 3G even now. High-speed data transferring? Video-Conference? Flexible unit changer? Now NTT DoCoMo in Japanese largest mobile telecommunication company is searching 4G now. 2G mobile phone units keeps continuously to be sold in Japan and I don't know whether any demands of usage for 3G mobile phone unit exist in Japan. It is because sending email or browsing the Internet is available by even 2G mobile phone units in Japan. For what is high-speed transferring data used in mobile phone field? Almost of all houses in Japan are already covered with broadband lines (40MB ADSL line or 100MB Optical fiber line etc). Are there users in Japan who want to connect with Internet by mobile to download large files? The answer may be No. Lots of large files can be stored in PC connecting with broadband line. Mobile phone units cannot store large sized data. Are there users in Japan who want to watch movie with mobile phone's screen? Nobody can be satisfied with screen size. Most of them want to watch movie files with dorby sound speaker and large sized screen monitor. Therefore what can be efficient with 3G and advanced generation mobile phone unit?! I cannot answer for this question.

In China, the survey says lots of rich chinese people know 3G service in mobile phone. In particular, users in Beijing know more than in other areas. Furthermore richer people tends to have demand to use advanced mobile phone unit. Why do such rich chinese people want to use 3G mobile phone unit? The survey data shows they want to communicate with video-conference(74.6%) or to transfer data(63.2%) by mobile phone. These demand are followed by GPS international roaming service (43.8%). Chinese people is heard to use 3G aggressively. What's the difference between Chinese demand and Japanese? It can be because of development of communications infrastructures. China is so wide. All areas in China cannot be covered with broadband line. There are many areas in China which don't have standard communication infrastructure. By the way, almost of 100% in Japan are covered with broadband line. This difference has much effects on customers holding mobile phone unit. Rich chinese people move to various places anytime and they want to comunicate with anybody and anyhow. But broadband line is not always available for them to use in such area. That's why these rich chinese want to have 3G mobile phone unit early.