Future Impact: Generation "W" in a Wireless World
A new study by International Data Corporation predicts
that the number of wireless Internet subscribers will jump from 5
million in 2000 to nearly 300 million in just 3 years. That would
account for more than half of all Internet users worldwide. WAP's
impact on mobile data would be similar to what Netscape's impact was
for the Internet: to provide an attractive and notionally transparent
portal to the cyber world, which had more than 200 million users in
September 1999, in addition to thousands of corporate intranets. For
E-commerce providers, that portal provides a potential user base of
more than 400 million mobile subscribers worldwide because the Internet
is ultimately about E-commerce. Although it includes a vast range of
so-called "free" services — e-mail, social networks, consumer networks,
a range of educational tools, computer games, and more — it is all
about global economic activity and productivity. For the vast majority
of fixed-network Internet users, E-commerce is still essentially only 1
to 3 years old; Amazon.com was not a household word in 1996. Internet
banking, brokering, and financial services were not yet deployed into
the mass market.
Yet this E-commerce world of B2B, retail banking,
brokering, insurance, financial services, and purchase of almost any
good or service is commonplace. There is no reason why the Internet
space should not be embraced by mobile users in the same manner,
subject to some differences in their marketing profile. [17]
Salespeople, for example, are provided, through a wireless database
access, the information needed to close a deal on the spot. Prices and
delivery dates can be checked, orders can be entered, and even payments
can be made without stepping outside the customer's office. That boosts
the hit ratio, eliminates paperwork (and low-level administrative
positions), improves customer service, and speeds cash flow.
Similar to the Internet revolution, this mobile
makeover will change forever the way companies do business. Out of the
office will no longer mean out of touch. In fact, remote employees may
make wireless a way of life, so they do not have to dial in for e-mail
and other information. Companies will be able to reinvent business
processes, extending them directly to the persons in the field who deal
directly with customers. Ultimately, companies and carriers could
deploy wireless LANs to hotels and other public places, creating hot
spots of high-speed connectivity for M-commerce. In the future, the
ideal mobile device will be a single product suited for standard
network access and services to handle tasks that extend the use of the
device beyond its hardware-based limitations.
A U.K.-based consultancy's analyst predicts that 70
percent of current cellular users in developed countries may be using
advanced data services by 2005, with the value of the cellular data
market overall set to reach $80 billion, from a very low base in 1999.
The takeoff of cellular data is attracting a host of new players to the
mobile communications market, including Internet-based companies such
as Netscape, Amazon, Excite, Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco. Media companies
such as CNN, Reuters, and ITN are examples of earlybird providers. [18]
As for the United States, the number of people using
cellular telephones for wireless data skyrocketed from 3 percent of the
online population to 78 percent over the
12 months from January through December 2001. The main reason for the
increase is that employers are starting to pay for these services,
according to a survey released by New York-based Cap Gemini America and
Corechange, Inc., a wireless portal provider based in Boston.
Currently, 33 percent of the U.S. online population uses cellular
phones for business purposes. Of that 33 percent, 11 percent (or 3
percent of the total online population) uses them for data applications
such as e-mail and news, the companies say. By the end of 2001, 78
percent of the U.S. online population will be using cellular telephones
for data. According to this survey of 1000 U.S. Internet users, which
was conducted by Greenfield Online, Inc. on behalf of Cap Gemini, 47
percent of those who will begin using cellular telephones to access
data in the year 2001 said they would do so because someone else,
mainly their employer, would begin paying for it. "This was the most
important reason for adoption of the new technology," said David
Ridemar, head of Cap Gemini America's E-Business Unit. Of those who
will start accessing data with their cell phones in 2001, 52 percent
said they will use the functionality for a mix of e-mail, personal
data, and business information, 24 percent will use it for e-mail and
personal data, and 13 percent will use it for e-mail only. [19]
Jupiter Communications forecasts a jump in
consumer-to-consumer auctions from $3 billion in 1999 sales to $15
billion in 2004. These numbers are significant because auctions are a
natural match for wireless providers for the following reasons:
-
Wireless auctions require much less bandwidth and data than a typical E-commerce Web site.
-
The time-sensitivity of auctions makes it much
easier to access over WAP-enabled phones or PDAs such as the Palm VII
(compatible with eBay) or Research in Motion's 957 wireless handheld
compatible with Bid.com.
Indeed, it is suggested by some analysts that cellular
subscriber numbers will top 1 billion by 2004, a substantial number of
them WAP-enabled. Clearly, giving mobile users the same mobile data
connectivity that fixed network Internet users enjoy could more than
double the potential global Internet market at a stroke.
The Gartner Group's Nigel Deighton maintains that,
given current penetrations of mobile and Internet markets, the stage is
set for a global boom in M-commerce that could largely ignore the PC in
favor of mobile devices. He predicts further that some 30 to 50 percent
of B2B E-commerce will be carried out via a mobile device by 2004. [20]
Motorola, for example, estimates that by 2005 the number of wireless
devices with Internet access will exceed the number of wired ones.
These smart new telephones will not only give another boost to the sale
of mobiles, but they will change the nature of the Internet economy,
making personal computers far-less important, yet at the same time
tempting many more people onto the information superhighway. [21]
I strongly believe that trade cannot be tied to
wires. As so much research indicates, a major part of the workforce is
heading toward location independence. The PC-based Internet has already
redefined the nature of doing business, giving birth to popular
E-commerce. However, to be truly location independent and to be
"anytime, anywhere," the PC is not the choice for B2B and B2C
M-commerce. Necessity is the
mother of all invention. M-commerce is already becoming a necessity in
this age of the digital economy. In conclusion, the world is betting on
M-commerce, in a manner reminiscent of the 1999 United States bet on
Internet commerce. We can safely predict many losers, and a few
winners, from the worldwide run to mobile Internet services.
Sections
