Cellphone users log in on social networking sites

MANILA, Philippines - More social networking site (SNS) users in Asia-Pacific, including those in the Philippines, are logging in through their mobile phones potentially overtaking personal computers as the device of choice, according to research firm International Data Corp.’s recent survey.

“The survey findings thus show that mobile phones and mobile Internet hold the promise of changing the SNS landscape in the Asia-Pacific region. Particularly in markets where PC penetration is relatively low, mobile phones have the potential to eventually overtake the PC as a preferred way of accessing SNSs,” said Debbie Swee, market analyst at IDC Asia-Pacific Emerging Technologies Research.

The survey interviewed 1,400 SNS users, aged between 15 to 35 years, from December 2008 to January 2009. The survey is part of a series of studies that evaluate the impact of Web 2.0 on Internet users in Australia, India, China, Korea, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

SNSs are web-based services that facilitate interaction between groups of individuals, by allowing them to create public or semi-public profiles, depending on the privacy level set, to describe themselves; link to a list of other users with whom they share a connection; and view their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

The nature and organization of these connections varies from site to site. SNSs include sites such as Friendster, Facebook, Hi5 and MySpace. Non-SNS include sites such as YouTube, Amazon and Wikipedia.

The IDC survey indicated, however, that mobile operators’ pricing strategies are possibly keeping many non-users away from mobile social networking. Majority of users who have never logged in to SNSs through mobile phones before have cited the hefty data tariffs as the main obstacle. These service fees can be in the form of mobile Internet, SMS (text messaging) or MMS access.

But SNS users have asserted that more are likely to try out mobile versions of SNS if telcos offer more affordable data rates. The availability of user-friendly mobile applications is also perceived as a notable area of improvement, although to a lesser extent.

IDC noted that in countries such as China, India, Korea and Thailand, over 50 percent of the users interviewed have now made accessing SNSs via the mobile phone a weekly habit. This is particularly widespread in the China and Thailand markets, where 62 percent and 65 percent of respective users regularly obtain news alerts and notifications, receive and reply to messages, upload photos, or update personal status and profiles on popular SNSs via mobile phone browsers.

By contrast, Australia and Singapore see the lowest percentage of users who access mobile versions of SNSs, where only 19 percent and 25 percent of respective users log in weekly through their mobile browsers.

“The prevalence of owning a cellular phone over a PC in China, India and Thailand has directly boosted the popularity of mobile SNS access. In Korea, however, there is strong usage for a different reason – the market is technologically advanced and has already seen mass adoption of mobile Internet as compared with all other countries surveyed in the study,” Swee said.

“As for Australia and Singapore, despite also being technologically advanced markets, the overwhelming importance of the PC over mobile has created strong inertia against adopting regular mobile access of SNSs,” She added.

“For mobile operators in China, India and Thailand, IDC believes a low flat-rate Internet access fee would complement and increase mobile SNS adoption. However, in Australia, Korea and Singapore where data tariffs are already relatively low, operators need to correct users’ misconceptions of pricey data plans through advertising and other marketing efforts. Failing to do so could mean that mobile Internet applications and services, not just mobile SNSs, will take longer to truly take off,” Swee explained.