After a few false starts, virtually everyone in the wireless industry agrees it’s time to get serious about mobile data and deliver some features customers can love.
They also agree it’s time to stop exaggerating the virtues of wireless data, but dropping a habit so deeply ingrained may be impossible.
Cellular phones have been fantastically successful at enabling people to talk anywhere at anytime, but popular as it is, voice service has carried the industry just about as far as it can go.
With 130 million Americans now using wireless phones, there isn’t much room left to expand. If the industry is to continue growing, it must lure customers into using new wireless data services.
It is not surprising then, that as the giant Comdex trade show commences at Chicago’s McCormick Place on Monday, wireless data will be front and center, occupying the place once dominated by desktop and laptop computers.
“We have a very different focus and different mix of exhibitors than we had in the past,” said Bob Bierman, Comdex general manager. “All of our keynote speakers will focus on mobility.”
On the other side of the fence from carriers and vendors will be potential wireless data customers who may be less than ready to believe the new technology is the answer to their prayers.
Having experienced the hyperbole and then near collapse of the wonders offered by the Internet, many business people are leery about wireless data. Comdex seeks to help educate them about wireless’ true potential while giving the industry a chance to strut its stuff, Bierman said.
“We are definitely just at the cusp of something new here,” Bierman said, “and Comdex offers buyers and sellers a chance to better understand where they are going.”
Early efforts to promote the wireless Web fell flat because of lengthy waits to get rather skimpy bits of information delivered on tiny screens that were difficult to read. Yet these rather thin products were accompanied by enthusiastic praise from the carriers.
“The biggest problem with wireless is that the marketing departments hype things before they’re available,” said Craig Mathias, a principal with Farpoint Group, a mobile communications consultancy based in Ashland, Mass.
Advances in wireless networks being rolled out this year are called 3G for third generation or, more commonly, 2.5G, for an interim step toward the third generation of mobile communications.
Realistically, these new networks will deliver data at speeds comparable to a desktop computer’s dial-up modem. Wireless operators hope this speed combined with simpler interfaces and advanced handsets will charm customers who previously were indifferent to mobile data.
But the hyperbole persists, said Mathias, who has organized several mobile commerce sessions for Comdex.
“When the marketing gets ahead of what you can deliver, customers are disappointed,” he said. “On 2.5 and 3G, there is overhype. So far there’s limited deployment and the prices are kind of high.”
The industry’s tendency to overstate things has become something of a shared joke, said Jim Balsillie, the chairman and chief executive of Research In Motion Ltd. The Canadian firm designs and manufactures wireless devices such as the BlackBerry that enable users to type on a tiny keyboard to send and receive messages.
“It goes from everybody wearing wristwatch pagers to satellite phones to people using cell phones to buy Cokes and Snicker bars,” Balsillie said.
The tendency is to claim that innovations will be embraced by everyone, which doesn’t happen. But the wireless reality is impressive enough without exaggeration, Balsillie said.
“Voice is the one big application that everybody uses,” he said. “But it’s very hard to differentiate voice. You talk, you listen, and that’s it. Every carrier’s voice is pretty much alike.
Diversifying data delivery
“Data is different. You can really individualize how you present it and tailor your data product to appeal to a niche.”
Balsillie said there are probably 10 or 20 “juicy data applications” that will find market niches, and the industry right now is looking to discover them. His firm’s BlackBerry is used by about 2 percent of wireless customers, but that’s enough to be successful, he said.
The rollout of advanced networks this year and next will give carriers the versatility they need to win these niche customers, Balsillie said, and while future advances will boost network speeds, “the game will be won or lost” by what carriers do in the next year or two.
Part of the wireless hyperbole has centered upon words like “revolution,” which are used by executives even as they poke fun at excessive rhetoric. But the changes wrought by wireless are more likely to happen in the background and sneak up on people, said Ken Hallman, a vice president at VeriSign Inc., based in Mountain View, Calif.
“Today there is some [Internet protocol] telephony, some wireless Web, but it isn’t widespread,” Hallman said. “Tomorrow there will be new applications and mobile commerce. It’s not something where you wake up one morning and it’s all there, but rather it comes in small ways here and there.
“In two years, there’ll be lots of things in place and in 10 years, it’ll very much be here.”
Making products simple to use
VeriSign supplies service to wireless and wireline telecom firms. It is working on seemingly simple products intended to enhance mobile commerce, things like enabling a person to hit three numbers on a mobile phone and connect to a company’s Web site without punching in a complex address as is done on computers.
Another VeriSign product involves speaking the name of a firm into the phone and being automatically connected to that business through a combination of voice recognition and directory assistance technology.
“Things happen faster in wireless because there’s more competition, so you get more innovation,” Hallman said.
One of the first carriers to upgrade its network to 2.5G in the Chicago market is AT&T Wireless, and Jeff Bradley, an AT&T vice president who will speak at Comdex, said that this will be the year “when the reality overruns the hype” in wireless data.
“There’s been so much speculation and anticipation on what wireless would do for business, people have gotten a little pessimistic,” Bradley said. “But this has to be the year when they see there are real things occurring that companies can take advantage of.”
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Comdex Chicago
Monday-Thursday
McCormick Place
More than 275 exhibitors and 35,000 attendees expected.
Exhibition floor opens at 10 a.m. Tuesday. Closed to general public.
For more information, see www.key3media.com/comdex/chicago2002/ or call 888-568-7510.
