DRILLING DOWN; Phones’ Texting Feature Often Unused

In a recent survey of people from 11 countries, South Koreans were the second most likely to own cellphones with e-mail capabilities. Sixty-nine percent of the South Korean respondents had such phones, compared with 89 percent of Japanese respondents, who came in first.

But South Koreans were among the least likely to use the e-mail function if they had it: only 10 percent of them did, compared with 56 percent of the Japanese.

Why? The answer is unclear, one of many small mysteries in the survey by Ipsos MediaCT, a research agency. South Korean cellphone owners were also less likely to use text messaging than Japanese owners, so it did not appear that they were texting instead of e-mailing.

Across all countries surveyed, the study found that people used text messaging a lot, or not at all. In the United States, for example, 82 percent of cellphone owners said that they never used text messaging, 3 percent said that they used it monthly or less, and 15 percent said that they used it every week or even more. “If they’re using it, they’re using it frequently,” said Donna Wallace, a vice president at Ipsos.

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