I do. Pretty happy about it too.
From Wireless watch Japan:
KDDI Says Photo-mail Users Spending More
forbes.com
Source: Reuters on Forbes.com, Nov. 18
KDDI, picture mail, usage, revenue
EXTRACT: KDDI Corp, Japan's second-largest telecoms carrier, said on
Monday that users of its mobile photo e-mailing service spend about
one-third more per month than its other cell phone subscribers, giving
a hefty lift to revenues. "Presuming a typical subscriber has an
average revenue per user of 7,500 yen per month, (photo-mail users)
end up about 2,000 to 3,000 yen above that," Toshio Okihashi, senior
executive manager of KDDI's flagship "au" mobile service, said.
COMMENTARY: Yesterday, Bruce Kirk, director of research at KBC
Securities Japan and a wireless head from way back, told me that,
"Picture mail is the logical limit of handset [data] functionality."
He pointed out that, in general, data ARPUs are up (as reported in
this news item), but "not enough." If this is true, then don't get too
excited over KDDI's results.
Also, KDDI's photo-mail service has lagged far behind that of rival
J-Phone, and some analysts have commented that J-Phone is already
seeing falling network usage among Sha-mail users. In October, a
Merrill Lynch report stated: "One of the issues that we are concerned
about - and this becomes more and more relevant when memory stick and
external memory cards are attached/integrated on handsets - is the
possibility that end users are taking photos and storing them on the
handset and showing them to friends from local device or transferring
them to PC/laptop and, therefore, not generating any traffic
whatsoever on the mobile operator network. In our discussions with
other operators that have recently launched MMS, some were concerned
with usage patterns and user take-up. NTT DoCoMo and J-Phone have also
acknowledged that subscribers tend to slow down usage of MMS pictures
after novelty factor wears off."
Nonetheless, maybe KDDI - after rolling out some great handsets and
offering cheap data - has been able to spark some sort of virtuous
spiral in image and movie mail usage. A 2,000- to 3,000-yen per month
bounty is a tidy sum! |
