Patterns of Global Diffusion of M-Commerce Technology


While the statistics above indicate hyperbolic growth and proliferating applications of mobile technologies, global diffusion patterns vary widely. First, uses of mobile phones vary between low- and high-income countries. People in the developing countries often use mobile phones because these may be the only kind of phones available readily (Wooldridge, 1999); and in many regions of Eastern Europe, the mobile phone network is often much more technologically advanced than the older fixed-line network. Thus, while mobile phones represent supplements to fixed telephones in high-income economies, they are often substitutes for fixed telephones in lower-income economies (ITU, 1997). Likewise, whereas 3G mobile phones provide mobility and efficiency to the users from advanced countries, they are likely to give a large proportion of people from the developing world their first access to the Internet (Banks, 2001). In other words, the developing countries are gravitating to mobile phones because of infrastructure issues (Zuckerman, 2000). In some developing countries, such as Cambodia and Venezuela, mobile penetration already exceeds fixed-line penetration.

For this and for additional reasons examined below, global leaders in mobile technology and m-commerce are not necessarily the richest economies or the leaders in fixed telecommunications and the Internet. Compared in Table 1 are 25 major countries in terms of mobile penetration, fixed-line penetration, Internet usage, and per capita income. Portugal and Taiwan, for instance, have incomes that are less than one third of the incomes of Japan, Switzerland, and the United States, but they are far ahead in terms of mobile penetration. Similarly, Italy has one of the lowest rates of fixed-line penetration (Table 1) but ranks fourth in terms of mobile penetration. Hong Kong, the economy with the highest mobile penetration in the world, has a relatively low rank in terms of Internet usage. As indicated in Table 1, whereas income, fixed telephone penetration, and Internet penetration are significantly correlated with each other, none of these variables has a significant correlation with mobile phone penetration in terms of Spearman's rank correlation coefficient.

Table 1: Mobile and Fixed Penetrations, Per Capita GNP, and Internet Use

Country

2000 Per Capita US$

1999 Fixed Phones

1999 Internet Users

1999 Mobile Phones

Per Capita GNP

Rank Order

Per 1,000

Rank Order

Per 1,000

Rank Order

Per 1,000

Rank Order

Hong Kong

25,950

6

576

10

205

14

726

1

Finland

24,900

10

552

13

404

2

667

2

Sweden

26,780

5

665

4

445

1

578

3

Italy

20,010

18

462

21

158

18

528

4

Taiwan

16,100

19

588

7

216

11

521

5

Austria

25,220

7

472

20

203

15

519

6

South Korea

8490

24

438

22

213

12

504

7

Denmark

32,020

4

685

2

394

3

499

8

Singapore

24,740

11

482

18

289

6

475

9

Portugal

11,060

23

424

23

80

24

468

10

Japan

34,210

3

558

12

162

17

449

11

The Netherlands

25,140

8

606

6

258

8

435

12

Switzerland

38,120

1

699

1

234

10

420

13

United Kingdom

24,500

13

575

11

255

9

408

14

Ireland

22,960

15

478

19

132

21

378

15

France

23,670

14

579

9

121

22

364

16

Australia

20,530

17

520

15

261

7

344

17

Belgium

24,630

12

502

16

180

16

315

18

Spain

14,960

20

418

24

91

23

312

19

United States

34,260

2

655

5

351

5

312

19

Greece

11,960

22

528

14

140

20

311

21

Germany

25,050

9

588

7

149

19

286

22

New Zealand

13,080

21

490

17

209

13

230

23

Canada

21,050

16

682

3

369

4

230

24

Argentina

7440

25

201

25

14

25

121

25

Rank order correlations (significance levels):

Income with Fixed = 0.685 (0.00), with Internet = 0.507 (0.01), with Mobile = 0.318 (0.12); Fixed with Internet = 0.625 (0.00), with Mobile = 0.06 (0.76); Internet with Mobile = 0.332 (0.105).

Sources: International Marketing Data and Statistics, European Marketing Data and Statistics, The World Bank, and authors' calculations.

Nations vary considerably in the penetration of mobile Internet access compared to fixed-line telecommunications and fixed-line Internet access. Whereas the United States has been a global leader in overall Internet access, it lags far behind Europe and the advanced economies of the Asia-Pacific region in terms of mobile Internet access (Table 2). One reason for this is that fixed-line access is relatively cheap and generally not metered in the United States, whereas mobile Internet access is more expensive and largely metered. In most other developed countries, the continued prevalence of per-minute-billing of fixed-telephone-line usage makes calling plans for mobile phones comparatively attractive. The success of Japan's i-mode, beyond the indisputable technical merits of the service, is attributable in large part to the high cost and modest penetration of fixed-line Internet access. In fact, the adoption of mobile technology does not follow any single universal logic or pattern. While mobile technology in advanced nations is usually a successor or a complement to earlier generations of telecommunications, in developing parts of the world, to varying degrees, it represents an infrastructure alternative to fixed-line communications.

Table 2: A Comparison of Fixed and Wireless Internet Users in Western Europe, the United States and the World

2000

2002

2005

World

Internet users, million

414

673

1174

Wireless Internet users, million

40

225

730

(Wireless as proportion of Internet users)

(9.7%)

(33.4%)

(62.1%)

United States

Internet users, million

135

169

214

Wireless Internet users, million

2

18

83

(Wireless as proportion of Internet users)

(1.5%)

(10.7%)

(38.8%)

Western Europe

Internet users, million

95

148

246

Wireless Internet users, million

7

59

168

(Wireless as proportion of Internet users)

(7.4%)

(39.9%)

(68.3%)

Source: eTForecasts and authors' calculations (date: December 2002).




Wireless Communications and Mobile Commerce
Wireless Communications and Mobile Commerce
ISBN: 1591402123
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 139

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