Imagine having to push the # 3 3 times in order to type out an "F",
<<Wireless Web's Vast Promises
Have So Far Been Unkept in U.S.
By ANDREA PETERSEN and NICOLE HARRIS
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The U.S. wireless industry is going to need more than NTT DoCoMo Inc.'s cute cartoon characters to persuade customers in this part of the world to use its new mobile services.
The hype around wireless is deafening: Consumers, the ads promise, can get stock quotes, weather updates, news and sports scores anytime, anywhere, through their tiny phones. They never need be cut off from e-mail. They can shop from the back seat of a taxi or check their horoscope while waiting at the doctor's office. By 2003, 61 million Americans will use Internet-enabled mobile devices and will spend $9.3 billion on "m-commerce," or mobile-commerce, transactions, according to optimistic projections from International Data Corp.
NTT DoCoMo Hopes to Boost U.S. Use Through AT&T Stake
But at least for now, hardly anyone uses this stuff. Only 300,000, or 2%, of the 15 million customers of AT&T Corp.'s wireless unit are connecting to the company's Web service via their phones, even though AT&T started heavily marketing it back in May. At Sprint Corp.'s PCS division, which has been touting its wireless Web service for a year, only 720,000, or 9%, of its eight million subscribers have even attempted such finger-cramping maneuvers as buying books through Amazon.com, checking stock quotes at Yahoo! or sending e-mail with their wireless phones.
Scott Galloway, chief executive of Brand Farm, an Internet incubator, has had a Web-enabled Motorola phone for more than three months. He tried accessing the Web service -- once -- and hasn't gone back. "I'm someone who has trouble setting up their VCR," he says. "This is, in fact, rocket science."
There is a litany of reasons why people aren't using the wireless services: The keyboards and screens on phones are tiny and awkward to use (for example, you need to tap the "3" key three times to create the letter "f.") Data-transfer speeds are painfully slow, and each second spent waiting for stuff to download onto the phone costs the customer money -- as much as 69 cents a minute. Not enough Web sites have reconfigured their services for the few lines of text the phones can display. And there's the all-too-familiar risk of the phone losing the connection, which means a user could get most of the way through an arduous online order and then be dropped.
It is a "brain-dead experience," says J. Gerry Purdy, president and chief executive of Mobile Insights Inc., a consulting firm in Mountain View, Calif. "Consumers would have to really want to use this stuff to put up with the pain of typing anything on these phones."
Some people in the industry set up customers for disappointment by marketing the wireless Web as a mobile version of the fixed-line Internet, says Tom Trinneer, vice president of portal development for AT&T Wireless Services. "It's not about taking the Internet and cramming it into a phone," he says. "This is a whole new medium."
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Fun With Phones
Some unusual features on DoCoMo's i-mode mobile Internet phones in Japan
Ringing melodies & karaoke: Thousands of musical scores, latest hits and karaoke releases are available as phone ringer melodies.
Gourmet guide & recipes: Users can search recipes for specific ingredients, look up restaurants and make reservations.
Fortune telling: By entering birthdates, users can check their compatibility with friends, have tarot card readings, check horoscopes and receive voice analysis.
Lottery & horse racing: Users can access real-time information on odds, payouts and floor plans.
Real estate information: Users can look at vacant apartments, properties and floor plans.
Source: The company
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Besides the challenge of winning over consumers, wireless companies also face big technical hurdles. Unlike in Europe, the U.S. wireless networks are based on several, often incompatible, technologies. For callers, that means if you travel outside of your "digital calling area," your Web service is unlikely to work. The hodgepodge of technologies also poses challenges to developers trying to invent new devices and services for the untethered Web. And with security less than perfect on wireless networks, some companies are reluctant to bring big-money transactions to mobile devices.
What's more, wireless carriers will need to buy expensive wireless spectrum -- the legal rights to the airwaves that carry the signals -- to roll out the industry's next generation of wireless Internet services such as video. Spectrum auctions in Europe have cost phone carriers billions of dollars. Investors worry that U.S. carriers won't be able to deploy glitzy wireless services fast enough to make good on their own hefty investments, which may mean some of the companies could run out of cash.
This confusion has kept some consumers, even techie ones, from buying a Web phone. Ed Dandridge, the chief executive of PSE Networks Inc., a Web site for marketing professionals, is waiting until wireless companies get the kinks out before shelling out cash for a pricey new phone. "A lot of us have been burned before by being early adopters," he says. "Before I move to a Web phone, there's going to need to be a real track record."
The wireless industry now realizes this and is busy developing all sorts of new applications to lure the Mr. Dandridges of the world to try -- and stick with -- an Internet-enabled phone. The upside for the companies is huge: people spending more money to buy more airtime to use the services. Also, wireless companies hope to get their hands on the fat commissions and ad revenue that big Internet services such as Yahoo! Inc. and America Online Inc. routinely receive from e-commerce companies wanting to get access to their millions of users.
Many industry watchers say one of the killer applications of the wireless Web on phones will be voice. But they don't mean traditional phone calls. Instead, companies such as Tellme Networks Inc. and HeyAnita Inc. let users dial a toll-free number and retrieve, using their voice, information including traffic reports, movie times and weather. HeyAnita even will read e-mail from a user's Yahoo mailbox.
Other companies are developing applications that blend voice and data. Impulsity Inc. of Dallas is developing a travel service that will let users check in for a flight without waiting in line. You sign up for it on your PC and give your cell-phone number. About an hour or two before your flight the service will send a text message with a link. When you click on the link your phone will dial into Impulsity's voice service, which will ask you the Federal Aviation Administration's mandated questions and send a bar code to your phone, which serves as your boarding pass. At the gate, you swipe your phone against a bar-code reader and board.
There also is a lot of excitement around "location-based" services that will, for example, tell you where the nearest Starbucks coffee shop or movie theater is. By next year, most new cell phones will include global positioning system chips or other electronics that will make these kinds of services possible. Companies such as Qualcomm Inc.'s SnapTrack subsidiary and Trimble Navigation Ltd. are building GPS technologies that will let users do things such as get driving directions or track their cell-phone-toting kids, relying on a government satellite network to determine the user's location.
Analysts warn, however, that sophisticated location-based services are a while away. "We're a far cry from being at the stage when you're walking by a Banana Republic store and your phone lets you know that the store is having a sale," says Zia Daniell Wigder, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research. Also, the privacy backlash could be fierce. It is still unclear how consumers will feel about having their every move tracked by wireless companies.
Other industry watchers suggest that U.S. companies go after kids by offering games and instant messaging on phones. That's how DoCoMo's i-mode took off in Japan. "That's the crowd that will really scramble for something cool," says Aaron Sugarman, a regional president at Internet consulting company Agency.com Inc. "We need to find the equivalent to Pokemon cards."
Write to Andrea Petersen at andrea.petersen@wsj.com and Nicole Harris at nicole.harris@wsj.com>> |
