re: Nokia on 3G and MMS
>> Nokia's Optimistic 3G Vision
By Brad Smith
March 19, 2001
Wireless Week
DALLAS - Headlines proclaiming problems with third-generation networks have been everywhere in recent weeks. And while none of them spell complete doom for the technology, the tone certainly has been gloomy.
Among these are: "Singapore scales back its 3G plans," "Toshiba sees modest 3G handset growth," "3G delays will cost firms millions," "Japan Telecom delays hyped 3G service to 2002." The most famous may be the one in Business Week: "3G Short for Going, Going, Gone?"
K.P. Wilska, president of Nokia in Dallas, believes those headlines are a case of reverse hype, creating a false impression about 3G. Of course, Nokia and other handset and infrastructure manufacturers have a big stake in the rollout of next-generation networks, and one might expect them to be more optimistic.
Still, Wilska pointed out at a recent symposium for journalists at Nokia's North American headquarters that wireless technology doomsayers often have been wrong. He cited expectations in some quarters that digital wireless 2G networks would be too expensive for most carriers and might not succeed.
"The driver is not the technology, but the new services it enables," Wilska says. He expects 3G to merge wireless communications with the Internet to create changes in the way people conduct their everyday lives.
Analyst Richard Siber, a partner in the consulting firm Accenture, cautions that the wireless industry has placed a huge bet on the future that should be cause for some concern. On an upbeat note, Siber says analyst forecasts for the wireless services market invariably have been off the mark - underestimating what actually happens.
Siber says U.S. carriers will be at least one and probably two years behind Europe and Japan in the rollout of 3G, since the United States won't conduct spectrum auctions until June 2002 at the earliest. NTT DoCoMo plans on offering 3G services by May 31 of this year.
With 3G data rates optimally between 384 kilobits and 2 megabits per second, Nokia believes that multimedia services, which it calls MMS, will be the killer application central to the coming networks.
MMS should not be confused with wireless video conferencing, says Joe Barrett, Nokia's 3G market relations director. The company sees MMS as the evolution of short messaging services, giving subscribers the ability to package photos, audio and data.
Interestingly, the MMS standard uses WAP for transport, but does not use the WAP browser.
Nokia recently started testing of its multimedia service center server, which will store and forward these messages between the handsets and the network. Nokia's first 3G handset will be MMS capable, with 64 megabits of memory, Bluetooth and infrared. The handset is planned for European markets in the second half of 2002, with a North American version a year later.
What kinds of 3G services does Nokia believe people will pay for and how will carriers bill for them?
Barrett says the company's marketing studies show that simple e-mail continues to be the most sought-after application, followed by weather information, maps and route planning, traffic information, bank account data, news and travel information.
Unlike the wired Internet, where credit cards with minimum purchase limits are used, the wireless Internet offers so-called micropayments, charging as little as a few pennies for a single use.
But Barrett says 82 percent of those in the marketing study prefer a flat monthly fee for a service because they want to know how much they're going to spend, with 43 percent willing to pay on a per-use basis and 31 percent interested in a file-size charge.
A small number of those surveyed, 4 percent, had positive feelings about receiving advertising on their handsets to support free services, while 15 percent wouldn't object to advertising.
Early adopters among U.S. consumers were willing to pay about 50 percent more than they do now to receive 3G services. The U.S. market also had the highest interest in 3G services, with 39 percent expressing at least some interest. Comparable numbers were 35 percent in the United Kingdom, 34 percent in Belgium, 28 percent in Italy and 26 percent in Denmark. <<
- Eric - |
