Key ICT Information

• The number of fixed-line telephone subscribers in 2001 was 50,740,000, a 2.6% decline over the previous fiscal year, marking the fifth consecutive decline. This is in part due to the switch to the mobile phones, and in part replacing ISDN to ADSL for the use of high speed Internet access.
• The number of Internet users is estimated to be 55.93 million in 2001, 18.8% increase over the past year, reaching 44.0% of population or 60.5% of the households.
• In July 2002, the number of broadband users reached more than 5.6 million or 4.4% of population, almost quadrupled its size in less than a year, but still behind Korea and Hong Kong in terms of penetration rate to population.
• The broadband penetration per household that uses Internet reached 18.5%, with more than 350% increase over the past year.
• Now the average price for 8M ADSL high-speed Internet access costs around $20 per month, one of the lowest in the world.
• The majority of Internet users are still men, with 56.1% while women users consists 43.9%, but compared with the previous year, the percentage of male users dropped by 5%, indicating the rapid growth of female users.
• There are relatively more female users in the younger generation, 48.5% in teen age, but 30.3% in the 60 to 69 years old, and 26.5% over 70 years old people.
• The number of mobile phone subscribers reached 71,622 thousands in August 2002, 10.7% increase over the past year.
• In terms of penetration per population, it is still under 60%, lagging behind Hong Kong, Korea or Singapore.
• Mobile phone subscription rate is still expensive in Japan, with monthly minimum of around 2,500 yen and usage fee between 20 to 40 yen per minute, depending on the subscription plan.
• The penetration rate of personal computers (PCs) is also extensive. 58% of household own and use PCs in 2001, 14.8% increase over the past year.
• The number of broadband subscribers in Japan surged in the first half of 2002 and reached more than 5 million in July, almost doubled within 6 months due mostly to fierce price competition triggered by Yahoo BB, a subsidiary of Softbank Corporation, a renowned entrepreneur enterprise led by Masayoshi Son.
• Service providers responded to this price war and ADSL prices in Japan went down significantly: less than $20 per month for 8M bit services. As a result, the number of Japan's DSL and Cable Internet subscribers reached 3.6 million and 1.6 million respectively as of July 2002, making a total of more than 5 million, showing some 300% growth over the past years.

Education (both for formal and non-formal programmes)

• According to a survey conducted by Osaka Education University in March 2002, 1,300 webmasters replied to an e-mail questionnaire from out of 9,913 addressees, revealing that 29% use dial-up connection, 29% use mid-band (less than 1.5M) access, and 38% use broadband (more than 1.5M) connection.
• In Japan, only 8.3% of classrooms are connected with LAN environment to Internet, while Korea has connected 100% of its classrooms and the US 77%.
• A total of 15,000 primary, secondary and high schools has websites according to the same survey mentioned above.
• 33% of the respondents said teachers do allow students to use Internet under their presence, 22% said the students can use Internet during break and after-class hours on their own, 18% replied that teachers make judgment when the students can use it on their own, 14% said they do not allow the use outside regular classes, and 10% said teachers monitor the use during break and after-class hours.
  

Industry/Business

• According to the Internet White Paper 2002, 9.3% of the general Internet users have experience in purchasing commercial content, while 14.7 % of the broadband users have purchased them, clearly higher than narrow band users.
  Among the content, business software download is the highest, 46% of regular users and 60% of broadband users; entertainment software is the second, 25% of regular users and 16% of broadband users. Third most popular commercial content is music, 23% of regular users and 15% of broadband users. This survey does not include online game, which is estimated to reach 35 billion Yen market in 2001.
  
• The Internet White Paper estimates that the digital content market in Japan in 2001 reached 48.5 billion Yen (US $400M) including online game, music delivery, electronic publishing and video streaming services. They predict that this market will expand into 550 billion Yen (US $5 billion) in 2006, 10 times increase or average 60%.

e-Government

• Japan's development level of "E-Goverment" is ranked as 17th among 23 countries surveyed by Accenture, and as 27th among 140 plus countries surveyed jointly by United Nations Division for Public Economics and Public Administration and American Society for Public Administration both in 2002.

Distance education/E-learning

• According to the survey by the Internet White Paper, 48% of the Higher Education Institute are providing courses over the Internet, and another 20% said they are providing courses on an experimental basis. These courses are provided mainly via the web pages and e-mail, few are doing the real-time video classes.
• The School of Internet (SOI) program by WIDE (Widely Integrated Distributed Environment) project, a pioneering project on Internet in Japan, has been providing real-time lectures.

E-commerce/E-business

• The total market size of E-commerce in Japan in 2001 was estimated to be 1,500 billion yen, or US$12.5 billion. This figure includes housing and real estate business which consists of 673 billion yen, but they only acquire prospective customers who visit their website and the rest of sales activities are mostly conducted as in person basis
• The net pure online e-commerce is estimated to be around 800 billion yen (US$6.6 billion).
• The largest segment of e-commerce market in Japan in terms of sales is automobiles, 347 billion yen (US$2.9 billion) but that is only 2.8% of all purchase of cars in Japan. PC and related product market reached 148 billion yen, 12% of all purchase of them in Japan, the highest share of e-commerce among total purchase of the goods or services in that category.

Source: Digital Review for Asia Pacific