Thread - .3% of Americans (certainly, even less of North Americans) have wireless access to the Web. Perhaps by 2003? Handset buyers are going to be faced with the same decision - which handset will take them a while into the future? WAP sure isn't getting rave reviews.
Sweden, Norway lead the way on wireless Internet
BY KIM GAMEL
Associated Press
STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Morning commuters standing on an outdoor urban rail platform lean over the edge to check for signs of their train. Erik Bohman looks to his cellular phone for more precise information.
Bohman punches a button on the dark blue Ericsson R320 and waits several seconds while it connects to the Internet.
He scrolls a list of bookmarks, hits another button and waits a few more seconds for a Web site to download. He keys in his location, followed by his destination.
The latest arrival times appear on the phone's small screen and, soon enough, the train comes on schedule, as trains usually do in this capital that is a leading incubator of wireless technologies. When he's onboard, Bohman checks stock quotes and reads headlines on his favorite news site -- a feature particularly useful during the evening commute when the morning paper is stale.
The Nordic region is leading the globe in Internet-capable mobile phones and Bohman belongs to a new class of entrepreneur convinced that handsets and palm-size computers connected to the Internet will forever transform information retrieval, shopping, stock trading and banking.
Yet while the technology promises a new world of convenience, even Bohman -- co-founder of a company that offers wireless business services for handheld computers -- admits the wireless Internet is not yet ready for a mass market.
``There needs to be more functionality. There needs to be an easier way to key in letters,'' the 27-year-old Bohman said.
In other words, wireless Internet needs to be more people-friendly.
Appearing on the mass market in Sweden and Finland earlier this year, the first cellular phones employing the Wireless Application Protocol, or WAP, were hampered by high costs, ergonomic deficiencies and simplistic applications. The devices' buttons are number-based and their screens are difficult to read.
Finland's Nokia Inc., the world's largest cellular phone maker, took one step toward solving the ease-of-use problem by designing a roller for its 7110 model that works similarly to a computer mouse. The phones also memorize words, meaning fewer key strokes. But the compact screen still requires much navigation to complete a single transaction.
``There are no colors, the screen is very small and the communication speed for these devices is so slow that it's nothing really very comparable to Web services that you get from the PC,'' said Petri Mahonen, head researcher at the VTT Wireless Internet Laboratory in Finland.
``The wireless Internet is really complex and we don't really have the tools to do it yet,'' he said. ``The main problem is not really in the WAP technology itself, but the marketing people have created too high expectations by promising to put the Internet in your pocket.''
The most widespread use so far for the wireless Internet is entertainment and information retrieval: games, horoscopes, news headlines and stock information.
Businesses in Europe and on a more limited basis in the United States are increasingly trying WAP; shipping companies let customers track deliveries via cell phone, and music stores and even cinemas are offering mail-order purchases.
Many European banks also have launched WAP services, but these are plagued by security concerns. Finnish-Swedish MeritaNordbanken said it overcame those concerns by using its own gateway -- but that requires a separate dial-in procedure than users employ to use the Internet.
Matti Oivio, an Internet specialist for the bank in Helsinki said that using the services are indeed cumbersome: ``If it's hard to start to use, slow to use and expensive to use, it's a wonder that anybody uses it, but they do.''
Oivio is among the users. He was sitting in a restaurant in Rome recently when he realized he had forgotten to pay for his wife's plane tickets. He dialed into his account and transferred the money to the travel agent.
``At that point I didn't have any other access, since I wasn't near a desktop computer,'' he said.
It's easy for application developers in gadget-crazy Sweden and Finland to be optimistic as they walk down streets filled with people who appear to be talking to themselves until their mobile phone headgear comes into view -- or staring down at handsets while punching out missives using short message services, or SMS, technology.
Mobile phone use far exceeds desktop computer use in Europe, particularly in the Nordic region. More than 50 percent of almost 9 million Swedes have a cell phone and the figure skyrocketed this year to more than 85 percent of Finland's 2.4 million households.
Those phones, of course, are increasingly tied to the Internet. The number of Net-capable mobile phone owners in western Europe is expected to surge in the next five years, rising from 25.6 million last year to 285.6 million in 2005, according to Massachusetts-based Forrester Research Inc.
European countries got a boost in the mobile market from a joint decision a decade ago to adopt a uniform Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications that allows cellular phones to be used throughout the region.
The United States lags way behind in the wireless Internet market. Only 37.5 percent of Americans are projected to have a cell phone this year, and only 0.3 percent of those would have access to the Internet, according to Forrester.
Use of the mobile Internet is expected to grow as the relatively slow WAP -- used to build Web sites readable on the small screens of mobile phones and handheld computers -- is supplemented by faster technologies including eventually the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, or UMTS, which will improve on the Global System for Mobile.
UMTS will transfer data in packets at speeds of up to two megabits per second -- faster than many fixed-line technologies -- allowing a continuous Internet connection and enabling users to browse, download e-mail, music and pictures.
``The mobile Internet five years from now will look very different from the way it is today,'' said Matthew Nordan, European research director for Forrester.
Great hopes also are pinned on location-based technology that will automatically know where users are and provide directions to local restaurants, hotels and stores.
For now, though, it's still a cumbersome process -- not to mention the fact that current users can't receive phone calls while they're logged on and pay for usage on a per-minute basis. E-mail can be received, but requires a separate address and is limited to as few as four lines on current screens.
So while Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobil unit in Germany estimates it has sold about 250,000 WAP phones, on which users conduct about 35,000 transactions daily, that's not a lot considering its 14.3 million customers. But T-Mobil is optimistic.
``WAP is one of the most successful innovations in recent years and it's growing much faster than the Internet itself did in the beginning,'' T-Mobil spokesman Philipp Schindera said.
Experts wonder, though, just how much the mobile phones of the future will actually look like today's models. Manufacturers already plan to launch phones soon with bigger screens, touch and voice commands -- and attachable letter-based keyboards.
Stockholm-based Ericsson thinks its R380 model, expected to hit stores by early October, will be a turning point. The phone's keypad flips over, revealing a 1-by-3.3-inch touch screen with icons similar to those on computer screens.
That leaves many consumers hesitant about buying current models.
``The question really is: When do you buy it and what do you wait for? There's so much around the corner,'' said Tim Sheedy, a London-based researcher for International Data Corp.
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