Quick Survey

[franck]

Hello,

Recently, I've been searching for worldwide statistics about the number of people who use emails on their mobile phone, but I failed to find them.
In order to have at least a rough idea, could everyone have the kindness to tell me if you don't mind typing/sending email from your cellphone and if you often use this kind of media for staying in touch with people? What about people in your country? (e.g: in France the craze in still for SMS and emails are barely used).

Thank you very much and ahave a good day.

[trip_hop]

Good evening M. Franck

Check out the Philippine text messaging. I think it was 25 words or so were free, so text messaging is very highly developed over there. It nearly toppled the government, as people were able to pass information on extremely quickly. There was an outcry when the phone company proposed charging for the service.

It is certainly mentioned in the FEER (Far Eastern Economic Review) and TelecomAsia. Better get a better search engine, or choose your words carefully.

Some other Asian countries may be similar, where landlines and PCs are expensive, and. or take a long time to connect.

Ciao

Trip Hop

Personally, I keep email to my Macs, as 20% or more consist of large attachments 200KB-6MB for business. I may be old fashioned but my phone is for talking, my Mac for mailing, and my Palm for schedule and addresses. I dislike the "one box does everything" approach, as invariably they are a compromise, menus are horrendous, and if it goes wrong you lose everything.

[franck]

Hello TH,

Well, I think I didn't find statistics because email enabled handests are quite new on the international market. But at least, I've managed to find a promising study (even if I would have prefered to find actual statistics):

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Study: Mobile Workers Will Contribute to Email Boom
International Data Corp. (IDC) reports that worldwide email usage will double by 2005. IDC predicts the number of email addresses will increase by 138%, from 505 million in 2002 to 1.2 billion in 2005. IDC also says that the number of person-to-person emails sent on an average day is expected to exceed 36 billion worldwide in 2005. IDC says new Web services, wireless devices, and workers getting first-time email addresses will contribute to this jump.
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In my opinion, quickly getting in touch with anybody in the world from any place (even from outdoor) is something that only email on mobile phones can do. Not SMS and not laptops either. Cellphones are the lightest and less energy consuming.

Have a good night.

[franck]

Found it here: http://www.epaynews.com/statistics/mcommstats.html
and here too: http://www.the3gportal.com/pages/Ind...ics/index.html

[Anonymous]

Franck,

An article (bit dated) from a site I used quite a bit in my MBA days. It has no specific numbers but talks about the use of wireless devices to access the internet.
http://www.strategy-business.com/pre...230&pg=all

[Glenski]

In Japan, practically everyone uses their cell phones for email. However, as Trip Hop pointed out, attachments are too bulky. That doesn't matter to most people, because they just send brief inane messages anyway.

They really could just use the phone feature itself and TALK to the other person, but I guess preparing a message offline, then sending it with a hasty click saves money. My wife does this all the time at home. Gets a message, spends 10 minutes typing in a response, gets a second reply 15 minutes later, and repeats the process sometimes for 4 or 5 exchanges. Drives me crazy.

[trip_hop]

For the modern Japanese who have no social skills or confidence, mailing is a "life-saver" as they do not need to speak or even look at the other person.

Witness the single grunt from a customer in a "combini" store as they pay for their purchase. A stark contrast from the elaborate greetings and bowing from 2 generations ago.

Life is 120 x 250 LCD screen!

[Anonymous]

You may find related information at http://www.mobilemediajapan.com/
I have a Docomo cellular and send e-mail from it often, but typing words is a pain-staking effort. Docomo limits e-emails to 500 spaces or 250 kanji characters. However, if you subscribe to AOL, I believe you can send 3000-spaces e-mails, but from a cellular, it is one hell of a workout.
I have noticed that there exists a delay in receiving e-mail, many times to my advantage to check with the service center for any e-mail that are temporarily awaiting to be downloaded. I also noticed that e-mail from other phone companies are delayed also. As for attachments, I don't think you can send any, and if you did, they will be all deleted at the service centers' servers. But with the increasing popularity of sending pictures/movies, this may have changed.
Docomo still has Short-Mail (up to 25 kanji characters or 50 alphabetical spaces, and only available to Docomo subscribers) but this is charged by the time you are calling the service center plus a minimal fee for each mail. E-mail is charged by the amount of data transmitted (packages of 126K?).
Hope this helped.

KawBoy

[trip_hop]

Check out "Yubi no Hime", the finger princesses, whose thumbs have now become dominant over their forefingers, due to excessive use of mobile phone's mailing services. Note the way their thumbs move over the keypads.

Our bodies are adapting to the technology of moden times!

[Anonymous]

In my case, I use DoCoMo and I use Sony's keitai...SO503/SO504i. It has a nice feature called POBox which speeds up the typing process. When inputting Japanese text, it gives a list of words beginning with the character(s) you typed in. For example if you type in one moji, for example 'ta', in a box at the botton of the screen it shows words beginning with 'ta', using the toggle (an other nice feature...avoids endlessly pushing buttons) to find the word you are looking for. But of course you can narrow down the list but inputting the second character. Also it has a nice feature of recommending the next word to pick, for example you type in a noun then a list of particles appear, if you type in a verb stem, a list of endings appears. It also 'remembers' recently typed in words. But only Japanese.

Regarding attached files, I think DoCoMo (except FOMA?) is the only cell that doesn't accept attached files. That's why the camera keitai's are not common among the DoCoMo keitai.

Anyway, I prefer my Mac for my English email, but I do access my mail with my palm connected to my keitai when on the road.

[franck]

Hello and thanks for all your comments.

After analyzing them, I was starting to think that a large majority of people misuse
phone based e-mails.

People complaint about the difficulty to input large messages, when they should only send short sentances instead, like we do in everyday conversation. Phone based e-mails are the new generation of SMS but not computer based e-mails ported to cellphones.
That's why attachments are useless in such a situation.
Also, with email aliasing, you can receive your huge email (with attachment) on your computer and receive a lighter version of this same email to your cellphone. Thus, while outside, you are warned that you received a mail and you can read the begining of it aswell.

A little story: when I was in France and while my girlfriend was in Japan, we communicated only via phone based emails. We saved money and it was a lot of fun also. In the bus, in the train, in the forest... from everywhere we could "talk" together at low cost. Also, the nice thing was that it was incredibily fast. One second after I send the message, she received it. Idem on her side.

Also, that's a nice to have you phone ring when someone adds a message to one of your thread on Gaijinpot :-)

As a conclusion, the reason why I've posted this survey is because I've just started to design a Discussion Forum that is accessible only via email enabled cellphones, thus letting people from anywhere discuss quite easily with people they never met before without the need to give away their mail address. Because all the statistics I've read stress on the fact that people who are using cellphone are demanding email capability, I'm quite optimistic concerning my project.

Tanks again to all of you.

[trip_hop]

Ridiculous conculsions from the data provided! Why not just talk?

People talk to hear the sound of the other person's voice, to get reassurance and nuance from a live person. Email is a cheap way of staying in touch, but emotionally bare, emoticons notwithstanding. It is just sending data, not a means of communicating.

I for one also do not wish to know everytime I receive an email ( by a short message alias), I can live without that. Although there are grey areas between work and personal time, I do like to keep some sort of working hours.

I think personally think the generation who like these faceless, voiceless devices are unable to conduct normal social relationships, and it is a way out of it.

Hit me with it!

TH

[Anonymous]

TH,

You're expecting rebuttals...mine is: it all depends.

Wrt cell phone email, I use it mostly to let people know if I have arrived at a meeting place early, or if I will be late. If I called while they were on the train it might be an issue for others. Another situation is when someone is at work and I need to let them know something.

But if two people are exchanging info about something like where should we meet this weekend...I always tell my friend via email, I will call them some night at some time (just to make sure they are home or free or what not).

For regular personal email, it is the same as snail mail...people I seldomly see and basically keeping in touch with. Another thing that is good about email is sending the same message to a bunch of people.

Email is convenient under certain situations, but I think people forget that it is easier to pick up a phone and call someone. But for communicating with some people email is easier.

SB

Personally, generally I am not a big fame of talking on the phone for personal matters...I always prefer to meet people face to face.

[franck]

Hello TH.

Sorry but I totally disagree with you.

1) I'm not one of those unsociable people but I just like efficiency.

2) Short messages can be as emotional as a voice under the condition you use the right words at the right times.

3) The traditional way has many cons also. If you are not available, people have to call again many times or to leave a message.

4) If you don't want to be disturbed at a certain time, nothing prevents you from turning your phone off.

5) Have you never noticed that people forget to go straight to the point, or repeat the same thing many times when they talk to someone else by phone?
In a phone conversation, there is often 80% of garbage and 20% of information that is "usable". That's why SMS messaging has become popular.

One more thing: when people communicate by phone, they don't take the opportunity to meet together because they can exchange all the information they want at ease for hours. SMS or short emails allow people to say the most important and force them to meet together in order to allow them speak about the rest.

FRANCK :-)

[Anonymous]

oops I meant fan not fame...

[trip_hop]

M. Franck
Maybe SB is in between us in attitudes, but would agree - it depends! I even prefer to use snail mail to express myself with a fountain pen and ink on good quality paper, and still use that for most of the family mail and close friends! Everyone else is on email, including my 86 year old great aunt, who has just got her first laptop! My mobile just functions as a pager, or very short phone conversations, such as "being late" or "please ring back."
Would also admit to suffering from arthritis and WRULD (Work related upper limb disorder) formerly known as RSI (repetitive stress injury) , which might explain my dislike for too much typing and computer use. Sometimes work is hard enough.
Good night
TH