Cost, Kludginess of Wireless Web Impeding Adoption

Computerworld - Anyone planning to make a fortune in mobile e-commerce - the new-millennium version of last year's dot-com frenzy - needs to think again, according to a hype-busting report from Ovum Inc., a consulting firm based in Wakefield, Mass.
The report discounted consumers' enthusiasm about relentless announcements of new mobile wireless services and warned wireless wanna-bes to focus on business users and "genuinely unique" consumer services.
Dennis Brown, co-author of the Ovum report, said even business users "won't pay a premium for existing (wireless) services, which are easier and cheaper to access using their phone or PC." Brown stressed that "if suppliers are to survive and prosper in the long term, their early offerings will have to be very targeted and very compelling."
Broad Points Ring True
Other analysts, along with wireless Web carriers and application service providers, agreed with some of the broad points in the Ovum report.
Referring to wireless banking, Iain Gillott, an analyst at International Data Corp. in Austin, Texas, said, "Few people want to transfer funds over Sprint PCS today'' because of concerns about security and the ease-of-use limitations of existing wireless devices.
Gillott said the industry needs to back up and figure out how to best serve both businesses and consumers with simpler applications.
In banking, he said, this could mean "a notification service that my checking account balance had dropped to $100. Then I could go to the ATM and transfer money from my savings account.''
Jim Ryan, director of applications and content at Sprint PCS Group in Kansas City, Mo., agreed that "there's a lot of hype in this space." But, he added, "at Sprint, we don't announce anything until it is real."
According to Ryan, Sprint PCS has already signed up several corporate clients, including a "substantial" number of users who have hooked their office system into the company's wireless Web service. He declined to identify any of those users, however.
Consumers, Businesses Learn
Mike Mills, vice president for business development at Aether Systems Inc. in Owings Mills, Md., also backed the Ovum report. Aether Systems, a provider of wireless application services, has developed several business-to-business applications.
"That report made a lot of valuable points," Mills said. "The challenge for business users is to learn about the realities and sift out the hype."
Transportation logistics -essential to e-commerce - is one area ripe for exploitation, since delivery services need, rather than want, the wireless access to data that Aether is pursuing, Mills said.
Management of salespeople - typically mobile workers - isanother area that Aether intends to address as an application service provider, according to Mills.
As for the hype, Mills, a former reporter for The Washington Post, where he covered the telecommunications industry before joining Aether last year, just laughed. "Of course there's hype," he said. "There's hype about anything connected to the Internet."