re: Wireless Voice & Data Tornado - An Asian (Chinese) View - Part I (Text)
In the subject header of this post I have borrowed a term from Geoffrey Moore's "Inside the Tornado: Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley's Cutting Edge", published in 1995.
Moore describes the "tornado" as a period of mass-market adoption when the general marketplace switches over to a new infrastructure paradigm. In this case the new infrastructure paradigm is infrastructure supporting data as well as voice in a mobile (or portable or fixed) wireless environment.
The period of hypergrowth (tornado) of mobile wireless voice has subsided. The period of hypergrowth (tornado) of mobile wireless voice & data has not yet begun, although some tornado warnings have sounded as this article points out.
This article discusses the convergence of mobility and Internet and the paradigm shift it will facilitate from an Asian perspective.
The term "3G" is used somewhat loosey goosey in the article text and in the tables it contains. For the most part "3G" seems to be used for mobile messaging to some degree, but primarily for mobile Internet access, regardless if the underlying technology is 3G, 2.5G, or 2G.
This is the text of the article.
The following link contains the tables contained in the article which contain some pretty aggressive forecasts that bode well for what Moore would call the tornado.
>> Mobile Internet and 3G Mobile: Driving A Dynamic Internet World
Telecomn Worldwide
China Inform Communication Ltd.
May 2001
With the advent of more complex and innovative wireless mobile applications, the convergence of mobility and Internet is moving at a tremendous speed and today's users are continually demanding new services as better applications, richer content and continuous connection. It is arriving not in a dramatic revolution, but as a day-to-day enhancement of our business and private lives, making mobile access to content-rich telecommunications, information, media and entertainment services a natural-but incredibly useful-activity.
The mobile Internet is much more than the Internet made mobile. Unlike today's fixed Internet, the mobile Internet promises to empower people by accessing to diversified information and online services from desktop computers. For the consumer this means a world where they are 'always on' the network to receive and send information efficiently via the web - including special offers, stock price updates, email, music, images and video, and more.
The growth of the world's mobile markets has consistently outstripped forecasts. 2000 was the eighth consecutive year that the global mobile subscribers base grew by more than 50% - taking global penetration from less than 1% in 1993 to approaching 9% today.
Three Waves of Mobile Internet Surfing
<1>"Cutting the cord": The first wave, already established, is making our familiar on-line services mobile - "cutting the cord' of the Internet. An example is using a laptop computer together with a mobile phone to send and receive e-mail or surf the Net.
<2>"Internet in the pocket": The second wave, which has already begun, brings Internet services to pocket mobile devices. Applications are specially adapted to work on mobile devices with small screens by using WAP. While this wave brings full, convenient mobility, it is still largely based around "traditional" Internet services, such as on-line banking, e-mail and web access.
<3>"True mobile Internet": In the third wave, the full potential of the mobile Internet is realized. Services, applications and content are centered to the mobility, location and situation of the user - they become "situation-centric".
In the emerging age of mobile Internet, more and more people will depend on personal wireless access to the Internet wherever they are. The focus of this track is on the infrastructure that will ultimately deliver these services to the consumer. The functionality and market demand for the efficient delivery of services through high speed networks over various technology such as WAP, GPRS and UMTS and the demand for more bandwidth are crucial to maintain service delivery.
More Than Mobility for Bringing Sophisticated Services
Mobile Internet means much more than just "making the Internet mobile". It is rewriting the rules of how we stay in touch, how we amuse ourselves, how we conduct transactions - in short, how we live, enabling a whole new set of services that can be tailored to the location and individual preferences, needs and circumstances of the mobile user-'situational services'.
Current mobile technology does not support as dynamic and rich a user experience as fixed Internet services or applications. To meet the high demands of a new era in messaging, mobile e-commerce and mobile entertainment, Nokia and Ericsson have already worked across several industry sectors to develop mobile Internet services and applications for mobile operators around the world, striving to help mobile operators keeping pace with these developments and maintain a competitive service portfolio by offering advanced services in a convenient and secure way as follows:
<1>SMS Messaging. According to the GSM Association, 12 billion SMS sent per month in 2000 will jump to 100 billion by the end of 2002; <2> Mobile Infotainment. The mobile Internet will open up many new channels for delivering media and entertainment services, including interactive games, played over the Net, online news and information services, music channels, event ticketing and betting and gaming; <3>Mobile E-commerce. Mobile Internet will enable users to conduct secure mobile transactions via a rich commerce platform; <4>Mobile personalized communication. Mobile Internet services can be tailored to individual preferences and circumstances. With a mobile portal, users can get a personalized entry-point to services like news, messaging, travel information and mobile commerce.
As we move towards 3G networks, the number of mobile Internet users estimated to overtake traditional PC Internet connections during 2002 will reach 600 million users by 2004, which means that more people will use mobile Internet than fixed Internet. In Japan, there are more than 10 million users of the i-mode service - which is comparable with basic WAP service - and each week another 150,000 new i-mode users are added.
Mobile Internet in China
China's mobile subscribers base is growing by over two million every month. In this land of cellular opportunities, mobile Internet is particularly promising, but it is only just beginning. Multinational companies and investors are all actively seeking to tap opportunities emerging from the fast growing base of urban consumers and the world's second largest base of mobile subscribers. Mobile Internet unites two of the most dynamic sectors of the telecom industry. It has the potential to drive growth in both sectors and to form a ubiquitous platform for communications and applications, both for consumers and for businesses.
Mobile Internet in China represents an intriguing prospect to many operators, vendors, content and application providers and will be closely watched in coming months for market opportunities. A lower percentage of the population in China can be considered addressable in terms of mobile or mobile Internet services than Japan or Scandinavia, but the sheer size of the market, and the general trend of living standards mean that growth is likely to be brisk for at least the next five years.
China's number two operator, China Unicom is recording strong subscriber growth, controlling some 20% of the subscriber base. Having failed so far to tap the potential of SMS, both operators are increasingly aware of mobile Internet opportunities. China Mobile and China Unicom operate WAP gateway services in numerous cities around China, and have launched trials of GPRS networks in a handful of major cities. WAP service has already been launched on a 'commercial trial' basis in China, but take-up has been slow, with a user base estimated at only 20,000 after more than six months on the market.
Mobile Internet will eventually prove a powerful service for users and a profitable one for business. China will represent a particularly important market. What is required now are faster, more efficient networks, expanded content and service offerings, streamlined access, and terminals more suited to mobile Internet services. The number of mobile Internet users will grow at an explosive rate as China shifts from 2G GSM network to 3G wireless broadband. According to some information, by the end of 2000 the number of cellular users reached nearly 70 million and that of Internet users 21 million. By 2004, 69 million Chinese Internet-users will access cyberspace via cellular, and the number of mobile phone users will reach 236 million while that of the Internet users will top 120 million.
Mobile Internet Poised for Exponential Leap
Most mobile Internet offerings have been based on WAP standard. Japan was the first country in the world to launch mobile Internet services when NTT DoCoMo started its i-mode service in February 2000. In one year there were five million subscribers; six months later this had more than doubled. At the end of September 2000, more than 12 million people were using i-mode.
In Singapore, mobile operators are eagerly promoting WAP and have been actively recruiting content providers to their WAP portals. StarHub claims 3,000 WAP subscribers just three months after launching service in April 2000. M1, another mobile operator, claims to be the first in the world to have launched WAP roaming. SingTel which launched its ideas WAP portal has about 20,000 subscribers in September 2000. In HongKong SAR, WAP users can use their phones for placing bets on horse races. SK Telecom has a CDMA based WAP service, owing around 2.2 million users with some 1,600 content providers by June 2000. Elsewhere in the region, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand and Taiwan China have launched WAP services while China, Indonesia, India, and Thailand have been testing.
Analysts predict that within 5 years of first 3G network launches, over one-quarter of subscribers across the world will be 3G mobile; over half a billion 3G mobile subscribers passed during 2007; over one billion 3G mobile subscribers by 2010; of which, Europe (including East) will cover over 90%. The high acceptance of mobile services and the introduction of 3G, with its attendant data and other value added services, including high-speed mobile Internet access, will make this possible. By 2004, the world's market growth rate will be 10% and 3% in 2010. The global penetration is forecast to pass 20% in 2004. There will still be 49 million net additions in 2010. Over one billion new subscribers will be added between 2001 and 2010.
Mobile phones are currently evolving into the web-enabled personal trusted devices. At the same time, m-commerce, messaging and entertainment and location based services will increasing drive both revenue growth and the evolution of technology. In recent market research report, worldwide mobile Internet use will increase from today's 40 million users to 225 million by 2002. By 2005, the number will have tripled to 730 million, or 62.1% of the total 1.2 billion users predicted worldwide. In Europe, the number will be even higher with nearly 70% of all Internet users being mobile Internet users. <<
Tables and forecasts (with my comments) from this article are contained in the next post:
Message 16082617
- Eric -
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