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To: Souze who wrote (35378)	10/13/1999 3:47:00 PM
From: Souze	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 45548

One view of why the mobile phone market is so important. Handheld Devices Spur Internet Boom AP Online, Sunday, October 10, 1999 at 15:12 By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS Associated Press Writer GENEVA (AP) - The boom of the Internet will be further fueled by newer, cheaper browsing devices appearing on the market as well as by industry investments that will greatly expand transmission capacity, government and business leaders said Sunday. Wu Jichuan, Chinese minister of information industry, told the global meeting that China had made great strides in expanding its telecommunications networks, but that much work remains to be done to give more Chinese access to the Internet and other services. ``Nearly a quarter of administrative villages have no access to telephone service yet,' Wu said. Industry leaders at the United Nations-sponsored Telecom 99, the biggest gathering yet of information technology industries, noted that products such as the new WAP-based mobile phone may be part of the solution for China and other developing countries. The cellular phone, using the ``Wireless Application Protocol,' allows the user to see information from the World Wide Web in the phone's small display window. IBM chief executive officer Louis Gerstner said the new devices and other handheld ``networked' products - personal digital assistants and pagers - were helping to shift the focus from the personal computers made by IBM and others. ``The PC itself isn't dead, but it's no longer occupying center stage,' Gerstner said. He noted predictions that there will be 600 million PCs in the world by 2003, but said they would be joined by more than 2 billion handheld devices and many billions of cars, TVs, tools, appliances and vending machines all on the Internet. ``In short, we're seeing a proliferation of millions and millions of new - and much lower-cost, much easier to use - access points, putting the Net within reach of masses of people who could never afford a PC,' Gerstner said. Senior officials of the Finnish cellphone manufacturer Nokia Corp. told reporters their new WAP-based mobile 7110 handset should be available to some consumers in Europe within the next few weeks. It is expected to launched in the United States next year. Another manufacturer, Alcatel, is planning to market a WAP-based mobile phone in mid-October. Volker Jung, a member of the managing board of Siemens AG, said his company will be pushing to increase its share of the world mobile phone market and would be adding WAP-based services. Gerstner said another change will be wrought by ``the gazillions of dollars of investment' in increased ``broadband,' or high-speed, transmission facilities that will speed access to the World Wide-Web. Gerstner said other industry leaders he talks to know that ``bandwidth will be nearly as plentiful as sugar or pork bellies.' John Roth, chief of Nortel Networks, said a just-released study sponsored by his company forecast ``an explosion of bandwith in Western Europe - with Internet users rising from 38 million today to 150 million by 2005.' That won't be a minute too soon in terms of time wasted waiting for Web connections, Roth said. ``An estimated 2.5 billion hours were wasted in 1998 while people waited for Web pages to download.'