WAP and M-Commerce
The average mobile telephone is essentially a dumb
device: good for allowing people to chat, but hopeless when it comes to
managing the information that makes people's lives go round. For the
past few years, the wireless industry has been engaged in a gargantuan
effort to change this. The idea is to create a single smart gadget that
will allow people to check their e-mail, consult the Internet, plan
their schedule, and, of course, make telephone calls; in other words, a
combination of an electronic organizer, a personal computer, and a
mobile telephone.
Toward M-commerce applications, Sonera of Finland,
which has implemented an Apion WAP gateway, is the world's first
telecom operator to launch WAP services (Spring 1999). In addition to
providing its own services, the telco/cellco is actively and rapidly
creating partnerships with companies such as Finnair, CNN Interactive,
Yellow Pages, Tieto Corporation, and Pohjola. [12]
In April 2000, a company in California called Everypath
started to deliver a new era of freedom in mobility and convenience
which enabled a user to shop, purchase gift certificates, bid on
auctions, trade stocks, play games, pay bills, purchase fine wines, get
driving directions, check the calendar, reserve a hotel room, track
home prices, plan a vacation, stay in touch, or order tickets from the
palm of the hand or with the sound of the voice, regardless of the
user's location.
In Japan, NTT DoCoMo has sold more than 1 million of
its Internet-based i-mode telephones in the six months since they were
launched, and received remarkably few complaints. The rest of the
world's producers are getting ready for a surge in demand as they
release their products over the next few months.
Internet content providers are already tailoring
their products for telephone users: getting rid of power-hungry
pictures, for example, and distilling long-winded news stories into the
bald facts. Nokia has an alliance with CNN to provide news that has
been specifically designed for telephones. NTT DoCoMo reports that
there are already more than 1000 companies providing Web pages for its
telephones. [13]
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