Mobile data users top 115 million

The total number of mobile data subscribers is likely to exceed 115 million by the end of this month.

The growth has been fuelled primarily by continued uptake in the Asia region, according to recent research.

"Japan and Korea led the worldwide mobile data subscribers figure past the 100 million mark in September 2003," said Kester Mann, senior research analyst at wireless industry watcher EMC, in a statement.

According to the report, EMC World Cellular Data Metrics, email and messaging are two of the most popular mobile data services for Japanese subscribers.

But in Europe, ringtones, logos, gaming and music currently drive usage across operators' data networks.

The research indicated that applications such as adult content and gambling, which are still in their infancy in Europe, are growing in popularity in Japan and Korea.

However, EMC suggested that there is some relief for "floundering" European operators as operator-branded services such as Vodafone Live! and t-zones begin to enjoy growth.

The analyst pointed out that there were approximately 16 million active users of services run over GPRS in Europe at the end of September 2003, a quarterly increase of just under a third.

For its study, EMC defined mobile data subscribers as active users of GPRS, MMS, CDMA2000 1X or i-Mode.