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Wireless Web: What';s the Impact on Your E-Business&#
...... have shown that on Telstra's WAP service, financial news, horoscopes
and sports results were some of the most popular services, followed by movie listings, flight
information, and Yellow pages reference data.
Hewlett-Packard has launched a Mobile Services Bazaar, targeted at service providers and
developers for mobile-related initiatives.
Companies like ConsumerDesk.com, a comparison-shopping site, already have WAP-enabled product
spreadsheets for consumers. "Soon, real-time discounting information will be made available for cell phone
users. And since cellphones are always on, this can become a real killer-app for m-commerce," says Rene
Jepma, CEO and founder of ConsumerDesk.
Pan-European auctioneer QXL.com has announced a deal with mobile Internet portal iobox that will enable
users to track auctions and receive bid alerts from their mobile phones. iobox, launched in 1998 in Finland, has
half a million users in Finland, Sweden, Germany and the U.K.
A star performer in WMI-space is Japanese Telco NTT's cellular arm DoCoMo, whose one-year-old iMode
service for mobile Net access has already surpassed the six million-subscriber marks. More than 800,000 new
subscribers are now signing up for this service each month. Over 12,000 i-mode sites are available in Japan for
mobile Internet access, offering banking, travel ticketing, news and email services via a "portal tone."
Next year NTT plans to roll out 3G W-CDMA services with 2 Mbps bandwidth and broadband content, as the
number of users accessing the Net via mobiles exceeds those accessing it via PCs. The pervasive, "always on"
nature of mobile Net access will undoubtedly continue to spin off entirely new innovations in online services.
Very interesting concepts are emerging in Europe, such as Amadeus, which provides a WAP based travel
service, Webraska, which provides a WAP, based navigation service, Paybox, which provides a bill payment
service, and NECS, which provides an e-mail aggregation service.
Companies provide internet-to-paging gateways like Silicon Valley based Unimobile.com, which also allow
consumers to control the receipt and delivery of messages, alarms and Internet content directly on their devices.
The service also lets users customize the look-and-feel of the desktop product to match their offline wireless
devices. Another offers online contact information and diary management solutions via mobile Internet Silicon
Valley called company eCode.com.
Roadmaps and Guidelines
Before embarking on their own WMI services, it is key that commerce companies recognise m-commerce as a
completely unique service. "Cellphone users are more impatient than Internet users. The paradigm here is not
surfing; all services for the mass market have to be pitched at users in such a seamless way that they need not
even be aware that they are accessing the Net," according to Cindy Dahm, international director for Phone.com.
"Businesses first need to understand their customers to identify where they can provide the greatest value in a
mobile environment. This could range from pushing promotional rewards to facilitating impulsive shopping over
mobile phones. Having figured out the mobile commerce strategy, businesses would have to m-enable their e-
commerce and CRM systems," according to Infosys' wireless consultant Vempathi.
The cost of m-enabling primarily would be that of re-writing the existing applications to make them MI-
compatible. There could be additional costs, which the businesses would have to bear if they want to leverage
cellular networks for providing value, added services based on location information, says Vempathi.
For B2B (corporate application, Intranet), the main cost will be education. "It is about a new way to interact with
employees, and that requires dedicated effort," says Gartner's Bidaud.
The most versatile language to choose by designers and application developers would be XML (extensible
Markup Language). Sites should be designed using XML for organizing the content and adapting it appropriately
to HTML, CHMTL or WML based on the channel of delivery - Web or WMI.
"But it is also important in design to bear in mind that a user would access a service over wireless for performing
highly prioritized operations which are time and location sensitive -- unlike a user accessing the service over the
Internet who usually has time and flexibility on his side," cautions
Vempathi.
So the wireless version of the service should be designed to enable high priority "Here and Now" operations
while keeping the wired version loaded with all possible options.
"Wireless interaction requires short dialog today since content is not as rich as on the Web. Design should really
focus on key applications, and make them easily reachable to mobile users. Simplicity is key. Local content is
also more important than in the wired world," says Gartner's Bidaud.
Many companies embarking on m-commerce tend to stumble on some key misconceptions, such as assuming that
the mobile Internet is merely WWW on the cellular phone, or that it is just a matter of code conversion, or that all
phones have the same and look and feel for WMI content.
Privacy and security are also a matter of concern, given the unprecedented precision that mobile operators have for
gathering user and location data.
The Road Ahead
To sum it up, we can compare the early excitement generated over WMI to the release of the Mosaic Web browser
in the early 1990s. "Just as Mosaic slowly matured into Netscape Navigator, WMI will also be capable of handling
text
and multimedia over both low and high bandwidth networks," says Shishir
Gundavaram, CTO of lifeguru.com, a wireless portal.
"A me-service has to eventually become second nature -- it must naturally weave itself into the fabric of our daily
lives -- like buying train tickets or checking flight schedules," according to HP CEO Carly Fiorina.
In conclusion, consensus seems to be emerging that the performance of m-commerce will improve since airtime
fees are expected to drop further, more WMI gateways will become available, and content and commerce services
from independent players will proliferate.
Torbjorn Nilsson, senior vice-president of business development at Ericsson, predicts that despite a slow start, the
potential of m-commerce is huge. "It will be like pouring out of a ketchup bottle. Nothing ...nothing... nothing ... and
then all at once," he says. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Madanmohan Rao is an Internet consultant and writer based in Bangalore, India. He is the co-author of the handbook "The Internet Economy of India, 2001" and the forthcoming "Asia Pacific Internet Handbook" (McGraw Hill). Madan was formerly the communications director at the United Nations Inter Press Service bureau in New York, and vice president at IndiaWorld Communications in Bombay.
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