IDC Survey Indicates That Less Than 10% Of Users Are Utilizing Services Other Than SMS

March 03, 2006

Singapore and Hong Kong, March 3, 2006 – IDC’s Marco Polo Survey 2005 is conducted across seven key markets in Asia/Pacific - Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, PRC, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan - to understand user perceptions and usage patterns in the wireless handheld market. Latest findings reveal that, despite the proliferation of content-rich mobile data service offerings, other than text messaging, the adoption of advanced services such as mobile phone payment, online mobile gaming and mobile email have yet to reach noteworthy levels of usage.

“Improved adoption of different mobile data services will go hand in hand with the pervasiveness of mobile handsets capable of supporting such services as well as ease of use,” said Karen V. Rondon, Senior Analyst, Asia/Pacific Telecommunications, IDC Asia/Pacific. “The challenge therefore lies with service operators and mobile phone vendors to educate and accustom the market to the value proposition of such services and mobile devices that come with affordable price tags.”

SMS maintained as the most popular mobile data application, with 65% of the users sending text messages everyday. Handset personalization services, playing games offline on the mobile phone and sending camera-phone photos showed encouraging take-up. Survey findings indicate that over 20% of users download icons/screensavers/logos/ringtones, send camera-phone taken photos and play offline games, with their mobile phones at least once a month or more frequently. More than 10% of users utilize information services, instant messaging and participate in voting events/polls/raffles, via their mobile phone.

IDC notes that the Asia/Pacific region’s mobile telecommunications market remains highly diverse in terms of pace and development, as reflected by the differences in mobile handset ownership and mobile data usage. For example, premium SMS/MMS services for all content types are most popular in Malaysia, Australia and Singapore, whilst PRC users are more selective in the type of services and inclined to use SMS/MMS services to receive news and sports updates. Sending photos taken by camera phones are most appealing to Korean users and downloading MP3 files and short video clips are more common with tech-savvy Australian respondents.

IDC expects a transition form 2G to 3G networks in the advanced markets in the Asia/Pacific region in the next few years. These high-speed networks, combined with influx of handsets with color displays coming out of China and Taiwan, and a larger pool of content offerings will boost mobile data services adoption to the next level.
IDC’s Marco Polo Survey 2005 covered 4,056 urban internet users across seven key Asia/Pacific countries on their mobile phone consumption and usage pattern. The comprehensive report provides insight into mobile phone ownership and replacement cycles, mobile phone bills, mobile data service usage and preferences. Findings are segmented by country, age group and gender.

The data set is representative of urban Internet users of any age. Sample size for each country yields a confidence interval of plus or minus 5% at 95% confidence level.

More details can be found in the report “Asia/Pacific Wireless Consumer Survey, 2005 (Doc# AP201340M)”.
For more information about purchasing the research, please contact Selina Ang at +65-6228-7717 or sang@idc.com . For press inquiries, please contact Holly Fung at +852-2905-4225 or hfung@idc.com.

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