Mobile Phone Society in Lithuania and Japan
By Tomomi Terashima
Media in the Baltic Region
Assoc. prof. Auksė Balčytienė
November 29, 2002
Tomomi Terashima
Media in the Baltic Region
Assoc. prof. Auksė Balčytienė
November 29, 2002
Mobile Phone Society in Lithuania and Japan
Introduction
Today, thanks to the remarkable development of telecommunication technology, you can make contact with your friends and family anywhere at any time by sending an E-mail, calling and so on. It offers a lot of conveniences and influences to the society.
For example, in Japan, mobile phone comes to be the most popular telecommunication tool and has given not only benefits but also various changes and problems to our everyday lives. In addition, it is said that the combination of mobile phone and Internet has encouraged the mobile use of Japanese people greatly. On the other hand, today, Lithuania also has the great popularity of mobile phone and its promotion is remarkable although the service of Internet-enabled mobile phone has not penetrated so much in comparison with Japan.
In order to find the similarities and differences of mobile environment in these two countries, the first part of this essay looks at Internet environmental factors in Japan and Lithuania, such as usage demographics, present technologies and so on. In addition, by referring examples of Japanese and Lithuanian mobile environment, I would like to deliberate the common social advantages and disadvantages all countries face with the growth of mobile phone at the second section of this research.
1. Environment of Mobile Phone in Japan
According to the statistics of ITU (International Telecommunication Union), the average penetration of mobile phone in the world is 8.19%. European region has the highest percentage-22.91%. It is considerable that the penetration of Scandinavia, where the technologies of mobile phone had advanced, is over 60 % (Kokusai, 2002). Although the penetration in Japan is not high in comparison with these countries, Japan is one of the countries which have large number of subscribers in the world.
In 1985, NTT, which is the largest telephone company in Japan, launched a portable car-phone. This is the original of cellular phone in Japan. It was not popular at first because of the expensive price and its ponderousness. In addition, at that time, mobile phone and pager were regarded as a tool used by businessman to make contact with their companies and correspondents. NTT also targeted mainly Japanese businessman. However, in the beginning of the nineties, pager became popular rapidly among young generation, especially girl high school students. The number of the subscribers was more than ten million (Tomita, 2002). At the same time, the popularity of PHS (Personal Handy-Phone System), which is a phone simplified conventional mobile phone and whose price is a little cheaper though quality of connection is behind in mobile phone, also increased and caused price war between PHS and mobile phone. As a result, people could use mobile phone without constraint because of the fall in price.
Today, it is said that there are more than 70 million users of mobile phone in Japan (Figure 1) though the number of contract of fixed telephone stays around 60 million. In addition, according to the study of Japanese Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunication, the percentage of penetration is about 42% in November of 2002. However, from my observation, almost all young people have a mobile phone. In fact, there is a research that over 90% of the students at a certain university in Tokyo have it (Yoshii, 2001).
Figure 1: The Number of Subscribers in Japan
Name of Operator / October, 2002 / September, 2002The Increase and Decrease of Subscribers / The Total of Subscribers / The Total of Subscribers
NTT DoCoMo / 145,000 / 42,306,000 / 42,162,000
au / 143,800 / 13,197,400 / 13,053,600
Tuka / - 5000 / 3,857,200 / 3,864,200
J- phone / 81,100 / 13,082,300 / 13,001,200
The Total of Subscribers / 363,900 / 72,444,900 / 72,081,000
Source: NTT DoCoMo, au, TuKa and J-phone
Figure 2: Percentage of Mobile Internet Use among Mobile Phone Subscribers
Source: statistics of Japanese Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunication
This popularization of mobile phone has grown with amazing speed in the last ten years. In the case of fixed-telephone, it took as much as 84 years that the percentage of its penetration in household exceeded 50%. It is not too much to say that the combination of mobile phone and Internet encourages the use of mobile phone in Japan. More than a third of the Japanese Web users access the Internet using wireless technology, and the percentage of users logged on thorough mobile connections far exceeds figures in other countries (Figure 2). Since 1999, when NTT DoCoMo, the largest mobile phone operator in Japan, started to offer “i-mode”(mobile Internet) service, about 52 million people have subscribed to mobile Internet service, with major reason for the high demand being its reasonable cost in comparison to home PC connection (Gordon, 2000).
All cell phone companies, NTT DoCoMo, au, Tuka and J-phone, have original discount services such as student fee and “Family Discount”, which you can use if you and another member of your family make contract with the same operator. In addition, there are other factors to encourage penetration of mobile phone such as massiveness of various services, tie-up with other industry and fashion. Today, a mobile subscriber can acquire not only phone call and mail service but also various functions such as digital camera, GPS (Global Position System), Internet and so on. Convenience and entertainment increased greatly because of this diversification of mobile functions. In addition, mobile phone companies offer new services by ting up with other industries. For example, you can buy a commutation ticket of trains through mobile Internet and just have to show display of mobile phone to pass through a ticket gate. Some companies join hands with Coca Cola, convenience store, photo shops etc. This has an advantage to activate both industries. Finally, it is an important factor that the users can choose call sounds, which is in the same level as the quality of CD, and favorite type of cell phone from a large number of design and color. Thanks to this choice, they can show their style comparatively. In this way, in Japan, the popularization of mobile phone has accelerated with fall of price, diversification of services and so on, which is caused by the competition in the mobile phone industry.
Figure 3: Major Functions of Mobile Phone Except for Phone Call
Animation Service / Map Service by GPS / Internet Service- Playback about 30 seconds
animation with sound
- To send information of
animation as a mail
- To film about 10 seconds animation with sound
(Video Camera)
- To take a photo
(Digital Camera) / - To make a map around destination and present location
- Retrieval of route
- Information about shops, cinemas, restaurants etc on the periphery of where you are / - To send and receive e-mail
- Function of Chat and Messenger
- Voice mail
- Banking Money
- To make homepage
- To download high quality music
- Video game
- To use search site for mobile Internet such as Yahoo, excite and Lycos
- To get information etc…
Source: NTT DoCoMo, au, Tuka and J-phone
2, Environment of Mobile Phone in Lithuania
The popularization of mobile phone in Lithuania has grown amazingly in the last five years. According to Europemedia net, the number of cellular subscribers expected to exceed that of fixed-telephone by the mid 2002. In fact, in the early of October of this year, the penetration rate of mobile phone exceeded 40% while the penetration rate of fixed- phone was about 30.6% in September, which was 33% in the last year. Both in Lithuania and Japan, the penetration rate of fixed- telephone tend to decrease, which might be a tendency of the world. In addition, the amount of mobile phone import indicates this popularization. Lithuania imported over 340 thousands mobile telephones from Germany over the first seven months of this year. It is up about three times compared with the figure of the last year (Europemedia net, 2002).
In Lithuania, there are three major mobile phone companies, which are Omnitel, Bite GMS and Tele2. Today, Omnitel is the largest operator company and Tele 2, which worked only in Vilnius till 1998, went in for this mobile phone operator’s emulation in recent years. In September of this year, Omnitel has about 700 thousand subscribers. The number of Omnitel subscribers grew by 73% from the last year. Omnitel expects to retain its 60% mobile communications market share this year (Burgis, 2002). After Omnitel, Bite GMS has about 400 thousands users and Tele2 has about 300 thousands subscribers (Europemedia net, 2002). In addition, it is a characteristic of mobile phone industry in Lithuania that some Scandinavian companies embark in Lithuania. For example, Omnitel belongs to the consortium of Telia (Sweden) and Sonera (Finland).
Figure 4: Mobile Operators in Lithuania
Name of Operator / Type of network / Number of subscribers(1000) / % of the market (Dec.of 2000)End 1997 / End 1998 / End 1999 / Dec.of 2000
Omnitel / GSM-900 / 100 / 150 / 180 / 240 / 58
Bite GSM / GSM-900 / 50 / 107 / 120 / 160 / 38
Tele2 / DSC1800 / N/A / N/A / 1 / 20 / 4
Source: Omnitel and BiteGSM information, media publications, estimation of experts(for 2000)
Widespread and reliable services are available in Lithuania today because the competition in the service market among three companies happens like Japanese mobile phone industry. Omnitel offers basic GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) services, Internet services, date transmission and paging, as well as Internet-enabled cellular phone which bring together mobile phone, computer and pager. Omitel is the first company providing such integrated services in Lithuania. In addition, as a part of services, all companies devote a lot of attention to expand connections not only in Lithuania but also in other countries. Therefore, nowadays Omnitel clients can use their GSM connection in as much as 57 countries and Bite GSM users can use it in 54 countries (Mobile Communication Services in Lithuania, 2002). On the other hand, in Japan, this kind of services has not developed so much compared with Lithuania. From my observation, it is thinkable that geographical features influence this difference. The people in Lithuania, which is a part of European region, can go to other European countries more easily than Japanese people, who live in the islands surrounded by the sea, and have much more opportunities to use mobile phone in other countries. Therefore, this service has developed in order to meet the needs.
You can find another difference between two countries, which is different ways to pay charge. In Japan, it is common way to pay charge a month. In Lithuania, however, it is common to buy prepaid card of mobile phone beforehand. Actually, this way is standard in Europe. Its market share is 63% in Britain and 80% in Italy (Tanaka, 2002).
3. Social Influence Caused by Mobile Phone
Mobile phone gave not only convenience and entertainment but also social problems and fundamental changes to our everyday life. Now, in the world, a lot of things are debated as a social influence caused with the growth of mobile phone. In this research paper, following three things will be talked; Influence on social interaction, language issue and social problems such as extreme advertising mails.
Influence on Social Interaction
First of all, mobile phone is bringing about great change in patterns of social interaction. This change has both positive and negative aspects.
As a positive aspect, it makes much easier to make contact with others. According to the study of The Juvenile Problems Council in Japan, 90.4% of Japanese students think it is the most profound advantage of mobile phone. The study also reports that 48.9% of the students came to talk with friends on mobile phone more than before and 56.3% of them think the relationship with friends deepened thanks to mobile phone. It is obvious that mobile phone help their social interaction. In addition, it becomes popular among the young to establish new friendship and acquaintances by calling or sending mail to people whom they have never met before while they deepen the relationship with close friends by mobile phone. Actually, there are a large number of web sites which offer chances to make new friends and boyfriends or girlfriends. According to Gorden, Mobile Internet communication allows people to make new friends based on mutual interests rather than primarily based on geographic proximity. As Shapiro (1999, 49) explains:
Because individuals are judged online mostly by what they say, virtual communications would appear to soften social barriers caused by age, race, gender, and other fixed characteristics. They can also by valuable for people who might be reticent about face-to face social interaction, like gay and lesbian teenagers, political dissidents, and the disabled.
In this way, mainly among young people, mobile phones are used positively as a tool to strengthen internal relation with others and make new friends.