Love for mobile telephony in Asia seen growing stronger
dailystarnews.com
AFP, Singapore
As the week-long CommunicAsia 2002 technology trade fair draws to a close, views espoused by industry experts pointed in the same direction: Asia's love for the latest in mobile phone technology can only grow stronger.
Apart from the huge population base, experts speaking at the region's top technology event ending Friday said Asians' way of life blended well with the features that came with mobile telephony.
Unlike elsewhere, mobile subscribers in the region viewed the cellular handsets as a must-have item, industry leaders said.
"The Europeans tend to use their mobile phones to increase efficiency, to save time while Asians tend to use their phone killing time," Claes Odman, president of Ericsson's Singapore operations, said Thursday.
"So their whole lifestyle supports mobility," he said.
Industry figures put Asia's mobile users at 310 million, about a third of the 930 million users globally and Odman said there was still ample room for growth because the overall penetration rate was just eight per cent.
In India for instance, the mobile subscriber growth is around 80 per cent with a big middle class base of 300 million while in China, users numbered 160 million and the number was still surging.
"People in this region are tech savvy and keen on the latest things so there are very strong fundamentals for growth in Asia," Odman said.
"Personally, I think Asia is where mobile (telephony) will take off," he said.
Asia is viewed an important testing ground for the full commercial launch of multimedia messaging service (MMS), seen as the successor to the phenomenally successful text-based short messaging service.
Leading telecoms players are displaying their latest wares featuring MMS technology with several new handset models equipped with sharp and bright colour screens, as well as complicated ringing tones to accompany the visual effects.
MMS allows colour pictures, animation, recorded sound and even video to be transmitted on existing wireless systems. |
