Keitai

This week, Xellular Identity has an interview with Nick Wright from Wireless World Forum’s Mobile Youth report.

…One of the more interesting findings is that mobiles have come to take the place in youth culture traditionally held by cigarettes. They provide or allow private communication, the activity is carried out largely unsupervised and they effectively create a rare private space for youth to interact in…

…One of the reasons for the low adoption of new mobile services is because youth cannot access the service easily either due to budget or the difficulty of setting up the service to begin with. One of the key factors in reaching the youth mass market is the ease of use of a service which allows it to become widely accepted across peer groups…

According to Nick, youth from 5-24 make up 28.1% of the mobile phone ownership market (does he mean worldwide? Not sure.)

And via, Wireless World Forum, there’s also a related series of video interviews with British teens who discuss mobile music, mobile web (”Never used it, Don’t know how. Too expensive I think”), SMS habits and how they feel about mobile devices.