Will WAP-Enabled Phones Dominate the Personal Computer Marketplace?
Everyday
there is some news about WAP-enabled phones and their growing use
toward the Internet. Is this growth going to sustain or even surpass
people's expectations to become the most-important medium for
communication and commerce? Will it lead the static wired E-commerce to
wireless M-commerce? Although the only Internet-enabling technology
being adopted en masse by handset manufacturers and service providers
is WAP, there are other options such as J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition), a
mobile ASP (application service provider), a Citrix terminal solution,
and an OracleMobile solution, all of which totally ignore cellular
telephones and promise to satisfy all of your mobile Internet business
needs over a pager. In addition, there are issues with WAP's Wireless
Markup Language (WML), which cannot be read on an HTML browser and vice
versa. Is Sun's J2ME, which allows a small application to run on the
telephone so it can be used even when disconnected, a good solution; or
is it too small and does it lack too many of the Java standard-edition
components needed to create usable applications, as reported by
Internet service vendors (ISVs)? In Sun's defense, Motorola displayed
applications such as expense reports, e-mail, and calendaring on a
Motorola iDEN cellular telephone running J2ME. [3]
In the business-to-business (B2B) environment,
real-time mobile access to online exchanges, virtual communities, and
auctions can be facilitated by M-commerce. Mobile workers such as sales
reps, truck drivers, and service personnel will be able to use the
mobile Internet. Medical doctors will be able to use their handheld
PDAs to access patient information, information on available drugs, and
online ordering and scheduling of prescriptions, clinical tests, and
other procedures. Unified messaging services will allow mobile workers
to use a single device for all their communications and interactions;
and ubiquitous computing will use online connections to communicate
exception reports, performance problems, and errors to service
personnel. [4]
Most IT executives are still on the fence, whereas a few early adopters
have settled on proprietary technologies. One example is a women's
accessory company, NineWest, which has a non-WAP client/server solution
for its field reps and buyers deployed into older Nokia 9000 cellular
telephones. Developed by the Finnish company Celesta, it creates smart
forms using Short Message Service (SMS) rather than going through an
ISP. This solution has reportedly been profitable for NineWest because
it alerts headquarters in real-time, rather than through weekly batch
files, when a store carrying its line needs to be restocked.
Similarly, NeoPoint of La Jolla, California, a developer of Web telephones, has created a wireless service called myAladdin.com
that, among other abilities, can monitor information such as airline
flights or stock performance, and alert a user when a flight is delayed
or a stock price drops. InfoMove of Kirkland, Washington, integrates
the Global Positioning System (GPS) and text-to-speech technologies to
create a private-label information service that has been sold to
DaimlerChrysler and Paccar, a heavy truck manufacturer. Tekelec makes
equipment for wired and wireless telecommunications suppliers to enable
them to offer value-added services to their customers. Because the
Federal Communications Commission requires that if you switch or move,
your telephone company must let you keep your old telephone market,
Tekelec's local number portability (LDP) software is the best on the
market and with its reseller networks such as Lucent and Tellabs,
Tekelec is a strong takeover candidate.
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