Figures and Estimates for Japan's Internet Traffic: Announcements of results of calculations as of May 2009
Main Points
• As of May 2009, the volume of download traffic by people in Japan with subscriptions to broadband services was estimated at approximately 1.23T (Terabytes) per second (see Note 3), showing an increase of about 1.4 (an increase of 40.3%) times over the past year.
• The average download traffic per subscriber, as calculated (see Note 5) based on the number of subscriptions to broadband services (see Note 4), was estimated at approximately 40.5kbps, showing a strengthening in the pace of increase since figures were calculated as of May 2006.
• Within the traffic exchanged between the ISPs themselves, traffic flowing from overseas ISPs to partner ISPs showed a strengthening in the pace of increase since figures were calculated as of May 2006. The present calculations show an estimated volume of approximately 213.1 Gbps, an increase of about 1.4 times (an increase of 39.6%) over the past year.
Note 1: Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ), NTT Communications, K-Opticom, KDDI, Softbank BB, and Softbank Telecom make up the six ISPs running seven networks.
Note 2: Professor ESAKI Hiroshi, University of Tokyo, Professor KATO Akira, Keio University, Senior Researcher CHO Kenjiro, IIJ, and Associate Professor FUKUDA Kensuke, National Institute of Informatics.
Note 3: 1T (Terabyte) = 1000G (Gigabytes) (10
multiplied by 12)
Note 4: MIC press release of June 19, 2009:
Number of Broadband Service Contracts, Etc. (as of the end of March 2009)
Note 5: The number of subscriptions that was used to calculate traffic per subscription to broadband services was the total of subscriptions to FTTH access services, DSL access services, CATV access services and FWA access services.
Other
The calculation values associated with this press announcement can be found in the Information and Communications Statistical Database at: http://www.johotsushintokei.soumu.go.jp/field/tsuushin01.html
Survey Results on State of Mobile Content Industry Structure
The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) has conducted a survey on trends of the mobile business market, which has been rapidly growing due to extensive penetration of mobile phones, improved processing speed and performance of mobile terminals, and changes in the communication rate structure in recent years.
The MIC has released the results of the 2008 survey which has been compiled.
Target of the survey
This survey covered services from mobile phone businesses which are available on the mobile phone internet.
* Transactions cover sales fees, others calculate sales
* Within the mobile business, in addition to these, one could add advertising and promotion but these have not been included in this survey (please refer to "General overview of the mobile business market" below)
* As of December 2008, there were 19,364 official corporate sites. The number of operators stood at 4,704
Survey results
1. Mobile business market
• The mobile business market was worth 1,352.4 billion (2008). This shows an increase of 192.3 billion yen (+17%) compared to the previous year.
• Of this, the mobile content business was worth 483.5 billion (an increase of 13% year on year). Mobile commerce was worth 868.9 billion yen (an increase of 19% year on year).
With growth in the population of mobile Internet users (75.06 million; an increase of 3% year on year; MIC's "2008 Communications Usage Trend Survey"), the market continues to expand steadily. The growth in the commerce market is particularly noteworthy
2. Mobile content market
In addition to the market for electronic books, the market for avatars, and item sales (SNS etc) is growing rapidly. On the other hand, growth in the market for ringtone songs has slowed, and the market for ringtone melodies is shrinking.
3. Mobile commerce market
Sales of goods, services and transactions all continue to increase.
Sales of goods: 377.0 billion yen (an increase of 15% year on year, up 47.8 billion yen).
Services: 349.7 billion yen (an increase of 25% year on year, up 69.1 billion yen).
Transactions: 142.2 billion yen (an increase of 16% year on year, up 19.1 billion yen).
<Survey Consignee>
This survey was implemented by the Mobile Content Forum (MCF) upon request from MIC. (http://www.mcf.to)
Mobile Content Forum (MCF):
The Mobile Content Forum was established in 1999, with the participation of telecommunications carriers, manufacturers and content providers, in order to energize the mobile content environment. In 2009, it became a general incorporated association (Number of members as of December 2008: 276).
Calculation Methods:
(1) Mobile content market
The total value was calculated from the documents made public by mobile phone operators. The breakdown was estimated from data in documents made public by mobile phone operators and the growth rates were obtained from surveys.
(2) Mobile commerce market
Interviews were conducted with the main operators and organizations that are involved in mobile business and estimates were obtained based on these.
