India stands first in sending photo via MMS

By agencies   |   Tuesday, 29 November 2005, 20:30 IST
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MUMBAI: The use of value added services provided by telecom service providers may still be low in India, but when it comes to sending photos via MMS, Indian males are the most avid users in Asia. Compared to pre-paid connection users, Multi Media Messaging Service (MMS) are more widely used by post-paid connection users for sending photos. In India, about 37 percent subscribers on post-paid contract are likely to MMS photos, while only 27 percent on pre-paid connection will do the same, according to the survey conducted by SmartTrust, a mobile device management firm. Pre-paid users form a vast majority of consumers in India and most of them are younger with limited spending power, says author of the survey, Tim De Luca-Smith, Communications Manager at SmartTrust. In China, subscribers at the age group of 16-24 are likely to use MMS. The lowest users of MMS are self-employed males in Hong Kong, aged between 25 and 34. Further, high and middle management users are most likely to use MMS in India. According to the survey, “Students are poor users, which covered 15 countries, including five in Asia — China, Japan, India, South Korea and Hong Kong. Although MMS can be used to send various types of multimedia files, photos taken with the phone’s in-built camera remain the number one source of content.” On figures of storing photographs on phone, nearly 50 percent of the Indians store photographs on their phone, while 20 percent store it on their computers. Of these a total of 30 percent send it via MMS, while around 17 percent use the computer to distribute photos. The survey notes that the use of value added services is still low in India. Only 13 percent of users have made a GPRS connection ever. Almost 99 percent of the Indian consumers use SMS, only 13 percent have ever made use of picture multimedia messaging and only 11 percent have used music player on cell phones, he added.