Walk the streets of any university area in Taipei, and every other shop seems to sell mobile phones. Typically, an overhead sign bears the logos of the "big three" mobile service providers, Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan Mobile and Far EasTone. Below, a glass storefront beckons with the latest handsets such as those from Nokia and Samsung, Sony-Ericsson and Motorola, or HTC and Asus, each reverently displayed as if a sacred, tribal fetish object. Beside the entrance, brand promoters--usually pop stars--smile from posters; while walls are festooned with gaudily packaged batteries and a multitude of other accessories. Inside is the counter, sometimes no bigger than a folding table, and behind it a salesperson sizing you up for the kill.
Not so long ago, these same shops would have sold shrink-wrapped software, PCs and peripherals, but times change and handsets now rule. Next, turn around and scan the street. Where you see people, you see phones. Near the bus stop, a guy is thumbing a game. A mother, toddler in tow, presses a phone to her ear. Everywhere, phones peek out of shirt pockets, dangle around necks, or are clipped to belt holsters, sometimes one on each hip.
Taiwan is mad about mobile. In 2002, the island achieved a global milestone, becoming the first country ever to have more mobile phones than people. That year, 24.4 million mobile numbers were in service for a population of 22.4 million--a stunning market penetration of 109 percent according to Foreseeing Innovative New Digiservices (FIND) of the Institute for Information Industry (III). Considering that infants and many among the elderly and the economically disadvantaged generally do not subscribe to a cellular service, many Taiwanese must have more than one active mobile account.
International Telecommunication Union (ITU) statistics for 2001, the year before Taiwan broke the 100-percent ceiling, show Taiwan had a mobile phone penetration of 96.9 percent, putting it far ahead of second-place Italy (83.9 percent). Although the situation has changed since then--the nation's mobile penetration stood at 106 percent in 2007 while other nations have since surpassed it--it is still remarkable that Taiwan attained its 2002 lead position only five years after the January 1, 1998 opening of its market to private mobile providers. Six licensed companies--since consolidated to the aforementioned big three--dotted the mountainous island with 26,000-plus base stations and now offer 90 percent coverage.
All Talk
Yet inexplicably, and seemingly opposite of neighbors Japan and South Korea, and likewise much of Europe, Taiwan's mobile phone owners rely on their handsets for the most humdrum of tasks--talking.
For young mobile users in Japan, for example, SMS (short message service or text messaging) is the dominant mode of communication, and voice is a weak second. But this isn't so for Taiwan, where only 3.7 billion messages were sent in 2006, roughly one message every other day on a per-user basis.
The so-called 3G--or third generation--mobile service, which has sufficient bandwidth for video and interactive features, has gotten off to a slow start as well. In 2005, Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan Mobile and Far EasTone began offering 3G service, and since then newcomer Vibo has joined their ranks. Yet an online survey conducted by the Taiwan branch of market research companies Taylor Nelson Sofres and EmailCash found that despite 3G-capable handsets enjoying increased sales, only 9 percent of Taiwan's mobile phone users have such a handset, along with the requisite 3G service.
In this age of digital convergence, mobile phones can do almost anything a sessile, desk-bound PC can do. Still, SMS, 3G and other data-based services account for only about 5 percent of mobile phone revenue, according to the National Communications Commission (NCC).
Echoing this is a survey conducted last November by III's Market Intelligence Center that asked 400 consumers who planned to buy mobile phones to rank 12 factors influencing their purchase decision. The responses of men and women were nearly alike, except the former were slightly more concerned with battery life and the latter with design and style. But in the end what mattered most for both groups were price and functionality, while extended data capabilities ranked poorly.
The most desired features were camera (90 percent), music player (83 percent), memory card (80 percent) and games (68 percent), while down at the bottom were online services such as using software (19 percent), watching TV (23 percent) and receiving email (27 percent).
Impromptu amateur market research confirms these results. Visit, say, 10 shops and ask what is hot, and you'll hear an alphabet soup of model numbers. Ask why a particular handset is selling, and you'll be told, "it's new" or "it just came out." Ask what features are popular, and perhaps the young woman behind the counter will turn down the volume on her phone speakers to say, "the MP3 player" or "megapixel camera."
Finding out why 3G and other data-driven services are not growing is trickier. Anecdotal accounts suggest that attractive payment plans are, in part, what makes voice so ubiquitous among the young. Students can sign up for special plans for unlimited calling hours at certain times, and they can talk to their friends all they want. They may also be more amenable to a set monthly charge rather than less predictable fees based on downloading content. In fact, the Taylor Nelson Sofres survey shows 3G users tend to be older, and presumably more financially established.
To mobile providers, Taiwan is a market with low "average revenue per user" (ARPU), and in their minds, ARPU makes the world go around. Every country is different, and right now, compared to deliciously cool handsets and plain vanilla voice, data services are a hard sell in Taiwan.
Social Science of Cells
"I'm not the first Taiwanese scholar interested in the sociological study of mobile phones," says Wang Chia-huang, a professor in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at Yuan Ze University. Wang's academic focus is social infomatics, a field he has pursued for many years. He also practices what he preaches: There's a Dopod PDA on one hip and a Motorola A780 on the other. "They're old," he says, apologetically.
His book The Sociology of the Mobile Phone? published in 2005 was the first book about the mobile world of Taiwan.
"For this kind of topic, sociologists usually take an empirical approach with quantitative user surveys or qualitative, anthropological methods--direct observation of people in public places or in-depth interviews," Wang says. "Instead I used Marxist theory."
"Marxism takes a macro perspective in its social theory, and it uses modes of production to try to explain the evolution of society," Wang says. "The culture of the mobile phone is closely tied to the market leaders' strategy of trying to sell more phones by constantly adding features. Social behavior is shaped by this."
With mobile phones, people have begun "aproximeeting," Wang continues. Setting a time and place is pass? Now everyone gets together on the fly with spontaneous invites and serial updates.
What is campus like today with so many mobile phones? Perhaps surprisingly given the current predominance of voice over text for mobile phones, Wang says that it is "quiet." He offers a story, perhaps apocryphal. There was a professor in Japan annoyed by his students' passivity. To provoke a reaction, he turned out the lights, startling himself when the classroom filled with the glow of hidden handsets.
"Already it's hard to remember life before mobile phones," Wang says.
Researchers' New Frontier
Taiwan is emerging as a natural laboratory for social scientists from overseas. Anyone who queries Google Scholar with "mobile culture" will discover that academia has established a base camp in the wilds of Taiwan's mobile landscape and is cataloging the digital behavior of its inhabitants like the anthropologists of yesteryear.
In a study of mobile phone use, Wei Ran, associate professor of advertising and assistant director of research in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina, and Lo Ven-hwei, professor in the Department of Journalism at National Chengchi University, contrasted mobile behavior in Taiwan with that in the United States.
Young people in Taiwan use mobile phones to establish identity and fulfill their needs for communication and interaction. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
Wei, who is on sabbatical at the School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, says that technology is flattening cultural differences. Young people, whether Americans or Taiwanese, use mobile phones in a like manner to fulfill core needs for communication and interaction, he says. One notable difference, however, is that Taiwanese are more likely to use mobile phones to express self and establish identity.
"Americans are supposedly more individualistic," Wei says, "but to the Taiwanese personalizing their mobile phones is a much bigger deal."
The researchers examined Taiwanese and Americans' use of ringtones, "skins" or outer casings, and other accessories in personalizing their mobile phones and found these were more prevalent and important to Taiwanese students.
In earlier studies of his own, Wei examined gender differences in mobile phone use in Taiwan. "Men are the early adopters, and they perceive their phone behavior as a means of getting information," he says.
"Women, on the other hand, see the mobile phone as a tool for expressing affection and maintaining social support," he says. "Men make fewer and shorter calls."
These gender differences match those seen in earlier Taiwan studies of the use of fixed line telephones.
"Taiwanese women love this new technology because it facilitates their social role," Wei says. "Women are caregivers in society. Even if they are at work, they can keep tabs on their kids. Are they home? Are they doing their homework? Someone described this as remote mothering."
Wei also describes a phenomenon that might account for Taiwan's high penetration of mobile phones.
"We looked at the social meaning of having a mobile phone," he says. "Early adopters are heavy users. They use their phone extensively for family and socializing. They reported satisfaction with family ties, and low measures of shyness and loneliness."
"Late adopters are light users," he says. "They want a phone so they are not left out, and they might have several of them. This gives them a sense of membership in a larger community. For them, the meaning is in having the phone."
Not every advertising agency in Taiwan has on its roster of clients a big brand mobile phone manufacturer or local service provider. But ad executives are astute when it comes to lifestyle trends, and they are tutored on how mobile phones--as well as all media and means of communications--are used in their market. They also pay attention to how usage patterns in Taiwan differ from those of its northern neighbor and the global benchmark of all things digital, Japan.
Cultural Differences
Is there a simple explanation for the differences? In 35 words or less, why are SMS, 3G services and mobile social networking more popular in Japan than in Taiwan?
The simple answer: Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) launched its mobile service in the mid-1990s when household broadband penetration was in the low teens, and for most Japanese the first entry to the Internet was the handset.
To anyone who sees the roll-out of new technologies as a Darwinian contest of product fitness, Taiwan's digital habitat might serve as an intellectually tantalizing counter example of environmental determinism.
Peter Lo, account director at Bates Taiwan, the local branch of the global advertising network that handled Nokia up until the end of 2007, says that Taiwan offers so many options for getting online the mobile phone is simply the last choice.
"Taiwan is too convenient," Lo says. "People here have laptops and there is WiFi in every Starbucks. What can 3G provide you? Even if there was mobile TV with a baseball channel, you could hear it live at a 7-Eleven. In Japan, people visit mobile social networking sites, and Far EasTone launched a service here but it failed. Taiwan has a different mindset. Nobody would use it to socialize," she says.
Another factor is relatively short commutes, and the fact that many people in Taiwan travel by motorcycle or drive cars. By contrast, the 40-minute-plus train ride to and from work that is common in Japan or South Korea is often cited as a reason for the popularity of watching terrestrial TV on enabled mobile phones in those countries.
In the short-term at least, Lo believes Taiwan will remain a saturated market with two big segments. The first group is the 70 percent of users who own an entry-level NT$5,000-$8,000 (US$160-$260) handset with voice, SMS and a 2 megabyte camera; the second is the 30 percent who have a NT$15,000 (US$490)-plus advanced handset such as a Nokia N95 or smartphone.
"The base need has been satisfied," Lo says. "The industry won't see a major jump for the next three to five years. I can't see any reason for it."
Compelling Content
Lo is probably correct. Only one thing might prove her wrong and that is a sudden increase and improvement in mobile entertainment and programming. Young Taiwanese already get a daily dose of what marketers call "compelling content" (programming or editorial content that consumers consider a "must see") at home via the Internet. To compete, mobile Internet must somehow match that. In their report for 2006-2007, the III's FIND analysts contrasted Taiwan's wireless content to that offered by i-mode, the wireless mobile service of Japan's NTT. "Japan's i-mode subscribers have access to over 12,000 official i-mode sites and another 97,000 unofficial sites," the report states. Nothing like this yet exists in Taiwan because the mobile service providers demand that content providers sign a contract with them. Few bother.
"The paucity of content is the main reason why consumers remain unenthusiastic about mobile Internet," the report concludes.
New technology seems to unfold relentlessly, fundamentally altering the way we communicate. Yet, what the adoption of mobile phones in Taiwan shows is that the rollout is shaped by culture and commerce as well. Young Taiwanese find mobile phones irresistible, and many replace them as new models arrive in stores. But despite the astonishingly high adoption rate of handsets, voice, which is almost passe in many markets, is the dominant service in Taiwan. Wasn't that supposed to be followed by the rabid popularity of SMS and mobile multi-media? Isn't that how mobile services are supposed to evolve? Taiwan says no, at least for now.
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Glenn Smith is a Taipei-based writer who follows emerging technology.
Anyone Here Speak Martian?
Thumbing messages on a mobile phone keypad is hard work, and in Taiwan the solution is a homegrown language nicknamed "Martian."
Martian was created in the same spirit as "textperanto"--the conglomeration of abbreviations and acronyms, such as LOL (laugh out loud), cul8r (see you later) and others used mostly by young people in the West.
But there are differences. Martian tends to rely on finding easily keyed-in Roman letters and Arabic numerals to suggest Chinese sounds. This is largely due to the difficulty of keying in Chinese characters.
Here are some examples:
3Q means "thank you"
In Mandarin, the word for "three" is san, so "3Q" is pronounced as a Mandarin-English hybrid "san Q," which sounds like "thank you" in English.
56 means "bored"
The numbers "five, six" are pronounced "wu, liu" in Mandarin, which sounds like wuliao, the word for "bored."
88 means "goodbye"
In Mandarin, "eight, eight" is pronounced as "ba ba," which sounds like "bye bye."
DD means "little brother"
"DD" stands for di di, which means "little brother" in Mandarin.
MM means "little sister"
"MM" stands for mei mei, which means "little sister" in Mandarin.
PMP means "to kiss up to"
"PMP" stands for pai ma pi, a phrase in Mandarin that means literally "pat the horse's rear" or to play up to superiors.
Other dialects may be used and Hakka and Cantonese phrases are condensed into letters and numbers as well.
Normally, to input a Chinese character, the sender keys in a series of phonetic symbols to "spell" the word. Then, a drop-down menu offers a long choice of homonyms from which the correct character can be selected.
That would be far too slow for skilled users of Martian, who instead select only the initial phonetic symbol, or select the first character that appears on the drop-down menu. The sentences that result are gibberish in content, but make sense phonetically if read out loud.
--Glenn Smith
Copyright © 2008 by Glenn Smith