WAP WAP WEB Sites Target Mobile Business Users
("Lucent has licensed Custom Netcenter from Netscape Communications Corp., Mountain View, California, to enable it to develop the portal. And it is using synchronization software from Puma Technologies Inc., Woodstock, Illinois....etc")
By David Molony
totaltele.com
27 May 1999
Battle lines are being drawn by network technology companies as they attempt to catch the imagination of the first mobile data users looking to browse the Web with high-speed wireless devices. Until now, vendors have concentrated on making browser software small enough to enable handheld devices to download files, messages and applications from the Web. Now they are planning further initiatives to target on-line business users.
Both Lucent Technologies Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have announced Web portals intended to attract Internet and intranet users on the move, and other IT companies look set to follow.
Analysts say that after the struggle over standards for third-generation (3G) wireless technology, and with spectrum licensing getting underway, the first real turf war over mobile end-users is about to happen on the Web.
"Wireless portals are rounding the bend," said Marie Wold, London-based head of the telecoms and media institute at Deloitte Consulting Ltd. "Like any kind of portal, the idea is to stake a claim. The technologies exist, but only now are [we] starting to get [services] that will point to those pieces on the Internet you can access on your PDA or cellphone."
Observers say the portal initiatives will help clarify to users what they will be able to do in future, and drive development of services at the same time.
"There is a desire in the industry to better demonstrate what 3G can do and what is possible across [second-generation] technologies now," said Alan Hadden, chairman of the communications strategy group of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System Forum, London. "This should encourage developers to come forward."
The UMTS Forum estimates the mobile multimedia market in Western Europe will be worth Euros 24 billion in 2005.
Following Microsoft's announcement earlier this month that it will join the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Forum - the consortium developing markup language standards to enable 3G handsets to access and display Web content - the company said it will establish a wireless portal service through its MSN portal together with McLean, Virginia-based wireless network operator Nextel Communications Inc., in which Microsoft plans to invest $600 million for a 5% stake.
Meanwhile, Murray Hill, New Jersey-based Lucent is hosting a portal for mobile Internet and intranet access on its own wireless data servers, which will be used by Web content providers to demonstrate and test services for mobile employees with portable PCs and broadband wireless connections.
Lucent's mobile portal strategy is based around a "virtual testbed" Web site called Zingo. The site is believed to be the first to recognize intelligently users of 2G and 3G mobile technology and to serve up Web sites and Internet services to them in a customized format, taking account not just of the need to fit data onto their various devices, but also of the different circumstances through which these users will be accessing the Web.
"The variable is in the way the portal presents itself and the content," said Paul Golding, managing director of e-commerce developer Magic E Company Ltd., Swindon, England, which initiated the Zingo project with Lucent.
For example, mobile business users who accesses the Zingo portal will automatically be welcomed by local travel information links and business directories. If they decide to make a connection to a service, to make a booking or download a file, the portal will format data according to whether the user is on a laptop or mobile phone - for example, adopting short messaging service for mobile users.
Lucent has licensed Custom Netcenter from Netscape Communications Corp., Mountain View, California, to enable it to develop the portal. And it is using synchronization software from Puma Technologies Inc., Woodstock, Illinois. This enables the portal to synchronize different devices to receive data. For example, a user accessing the Web on a Palm Pilot one day needs to be sure the calendars and databases sending information to that device are as current as the data going to a desktop the next day.
"[Mobile portal strategy] is targeted at the people-on-the-move market," said Dick Snyder, director of wireless applications and data strategy at Lucent in Whippany, New Jersey.
Microsoft's strategy takes it in a somewhat different direction, in that it is co-branding with Nextel and using its MSN service. The portal will not be open until later this year, when a major upgrade of MSN will be completed.
Microsoft's preoccupation seems to be with securing a channel for its Windows CE software. But the deal with Nextel could give it a headstart in winning developers to its portal, because it includes Nextel's 90 or so technology development partners.
Other companies announcing mobile portal-type strategies include Motorola Inc., which announced its PageWriter 2000 pager would be able to download enterprise applications software from the Web site of SAP AG, Walldorf, Germany. And analysts say other vendors such as Nokia Oyj and Ericsson AB will follow Lucent and Microsoft into the portal services market.
"I don't think that anybody will be alone for long in this market," said Roland Hanbury, vice president, intellectual assets, at e-commerce consultancy Nvision Ltd., Bracknell, England. "The highest takeup of palmtops and handheld digital mobile phones is in Europe, not in America. Sure as eggs ... at least one big European player is going to adopt something similar." |
