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The City Lights Reporter

 Online News Journal

Are Wireless Applications
The Next Gold Rush

By James I. Neusom

In the 1800's the word went out and America began the biggest migration in the history of this country.  The word was "Gold" from one side of this land to the other you could hear them say "There's Gold in them there hills!".  Well the word is going out again and a new gold rush is on an' kicking.  This time the word is "Wireless".  Consumer electronic hardware manufacturers, software developers, communication companies and Internet programmers are lining up to take part in this new rush to handheld PDAs (Personal Data Assistants), cell phones, and laptops, as the world media hypes them on with the mantra, "There's Gold in them there hills!".

Historians will mark this paradigm shift from desktop to handheld devices with an event that took place in February, at the DEMO 2000 conference, when a presenter bought a can of soda by simply waving his cell phone at a Coke machine.  This event  more than any other signaled the coming of age of M-Commerce. 

 M-commerce refers to e-commerce that is carried out on a mobile terminal.  Imagine walking up to a movie ticket booth and waving your Palm Pilot PDA at it like a magic wand to buy your ticket; or pulling into a parking space and pressing a command on your in dash Northstar-like computer system to pay for parking; or   calling your microwave on your cell phone and telling it to start dinner, while you're on the way home.  Yes, all these wireless applications are available Now!. 

They are already predicting that M-commerce transactions will reach $200 billion worldwide by 2004.  These numbers are not hype when you consider the penetration Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) equipped phone have made in Europe and Japan.  Finland is the leader with about 65% penetration followed closely  by Japan where mobile phone subscribers outnumber fixed phone line subscribers 56.8 million to 55.4. In fact, the biggest craze in Japan right now is sending e-mails phone to phone. 

 Similar to the gold rush of the 1800's the major players, hardware manufacturers, Operating Systems developers, carriers, portals, content providers, web developers and even home consumer manufacturers are all rushing forward to quickly stake a claim and establish a foothold in the wireless world. 

Although the applications are promising, the technology is not quite ready for prime time.  First, there's the issue of size.  Users want their mobile devices to be sleek and small but they also want Internet access.  The Lilliputian proportions of today's mobile devices make it almost impossible to write programming for / or  convert existing websites to, while maintaining any type of interactive experience.  Plus, using the touch pads on wireless phones as keyboards is a major frustration.  The six-button interfaces on many handheld computers are not any better.  

Then there are the issues of memory and processing speeds.  A high quality 15-second film clip can be a bloated 1 megabit in size, which can take a while to download.  Lastly, the industry needs to standardize the languages and protocols for  mobile communication devices.  This is one reason that wireless applications have not caught hold in the U.S. where mobile service providers utilize more then four different formats.  The uniformity of the networks in Europe and Japan makes it easier to deploy wireless applications there.

These barriers are not insurmountable. Already device manufacturers are experimenting with larger full color screens and optic software.  New user interfaces are being developed, not only for cell phones but for application software as well.  The term convergence and connectivity are on the lips of all home consumer electronic manufacturers. Whether you're talking about refrigerators, televisions, or automobiles, everything is becoming web-connected.  

The major carriers and the FCC are brainstorming to address issues of bandwidth and spectrum solutions.    Industry consortiums such as the WAP Forum (www.wapforum.org), European Telecommunications Standards Institute (www.etsi.org), and especially the World Wide Web Consortium (www.w3c.org) are working on establishing wireless standards.  

Bluetooth, the latest entry into the industry, has signed up nearly 1,900 member companies into it's Bluetooth Special Interest Group (www.bluetooth.com) to develop hardware and software answers to the connectivity problem.  Computer hardware companies like Intel are now developing low-power processors designed for portable devices.  Among them a Pentium III processor running at 600 megahertz that uses less than 1 watt of power.  IBM says it has tripled the capacity of its smallest hard disk drive, with the ability to store 1 gigabyte of data on a disk that is about 1 inch wide. 

Content becomes the only barrier left in the wireless world.  This truly is the "Gold" in the wireless industry.  The media is hyping web-connected mobile devices, but what can you do with them...read sports scores, check out CNN, buy something on Amazon.Com. These activities do not create an interactive experience similar to web surfing.  Why did you buy a television set...because of what you can see on it.  Why did you buy a computer...because of what you could do with it.  

Content Providers and Web Developers need to start creating the type of specialized wireless programming which will create a rich user friendly experience.  Then the promises we've discussed here and see everyday on TV, read in the newspapers, and hear on the radio will come true.  It has been predicted by industry experts that by the year 2002 this market will grow to 48 million paying users. The people who mine the mountains of content will strike the motherload in this new gold rush. "There Is Gold In Them There Hills!"

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