• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, October 20, 2003

Sell Newspapers to Kids on Their Cell Phones

Nokia Executive Vice President Anssi Vanjoki speaking to a World Association of Newspapers conference in Helsinki, Finland, reported that adults use mobile telephones to make their lives easier. Kids just want to have fun.

"Older people use mobile phones for efficiency. Have you ever heard a young person talk about efficiency? It's not their concept," said Mr Vanjoki. "For young people, it is more about excitement and fun. They develop incredible uses for these devices. They play with them." And he says that has very serious implications for media businesses.

Mr Vanjoki says that everything will be digitized and offered through mobile telephones, which he calls "media terminals." Music. Sports. Traffic Updates. Movies. News alerts. Imagine walking into a store and having a discount coupon appear in your portable that knows where you are.

But perhaps nobody in the news business has done more with mobile telephones than the Asahi Shimbun, which is Japan's - and therefore the world's - second largest newspaper. It started delivering news through mobiles in 1999.

Takashi Ishioka, Project Manager for the Asahi Shimbun Electronic Media and Broadcasting Division, noted that "The mobile phone in Japan is not primarily just for phone calls, but it is used also for mail and web access, taking pictures, as well as schedule maintenance. Our approach is to familiarize users with news contents via mobile phones, with the final goal of actual newspaper subscription, which is more profitable."

To attract as many users as possible to the phone service, Asahi adopted a strategy of low price to attract more than 1.2 million subscribers. "What they get is news alerts and more, particularly sports, because news is not enough. And now, thanks to 3rd generation telephones, streaming videos as well - news images are broadcast three times a day." Ishioka said.

Forty percent of the users don't subscribe to the newspaper, and the primary strategy remains trying to get them to subscribe. The company makes it easy to subscribe to the paper through the mobile phone.

Find out more here.