Andrew Seybold Sifts Fact From Hype At Wireless 2000 - March 1, 2000
The whole article is quite interesting. Here are a few relevant excerpts from the interview.........
At the Wireless 2000 conference, Andrew Seybold, a well-known wireless consultant and advisor to many key players, is entirely in his element. Amid a hectic day, filled with interviews and excursions to the bustling show floor, Seybold took some time out to chat with StockHouse about recent developments. While he thinks wireless and internet will come together, it won't be as soon, or as extensive, as a lot of the hype at the conference would suggest.....
.....The words "wireless" and "Internet", the predominant themes of this year's Wireless 2000 show, have come together to create many lofty valuations backed by shaky business plans. "A lot of very smart money people have become very stupid," Andrew Seybold tells StockHouse in an exclusive interview from the conference floor........
StockHouse: So it will be a while out until we are all communicating on wireless data devices?
Seybold: I have doubts in my mind that this is really about "all". There are 83 million and counting cell phones in the US. My belief is that if 20% to 25% of those people turn into data users, we'll have a big market. But, when you say all, and the industry out here is saying all, they say look at the potential, there's 83 million phones. The data market is not as big as the voice market and it never will be as big.
StockHouse: That's exactly what I was questioning when I spoke with Amazon. The company points to the number of cell phone users as the market they can capture, and points to various industry reports that suggest a large percentage of uptake, but that is a big, theoretical leap.
Dewey: We've got a couple of numbers to show the size of the voice market and the size of the data market, and the one from Forrester is very aggressive. And yet, [it shows] voice is growing at a much faster rate than data. Voice penetration is going to go up, up, up, that's where the big growth is, not in data........
StockHouse: Let's discuss another trend, on the applications side. Right now, we are seeing a lot of business to consumer (B2C) services being offered. Going forward, what will the growth rate of B2C be as opposed to business to business (B2B)?
Dewey: There are companies switching from consumer to business like Wireless Knowledge.
"Voice penetration is going to go up, up, up, that's where the big growth is, not in data."
Seybold: It's really interesting that the mecca here is the consumer because there are so many of them. Everybody threw time, effort and money into the consumer and now people are backing up and saying it's a business to business play until we get it right. Then it starts being a consumer thing......
StockHouse: What has to happen before B2C applications such as shopping and financial services thrive?
Seybold: The question is, what are the compelling reasons for a consumer to do this? We had a demo at Wireless Data University from a company called IQOrder. IQOrder allows you to go into a store and type in the model number of a VCR and do Web comparative pricing and comparative pricing with other brick and mortar stores in the area, and instantly find out whether you can get a better price on the deal. For a lot of consumers, that might be a compelling reason. I think one of the big movers is going to be, once every phone knows where it is, once we end up with E911, we end up with GPS and all this stuff, then we start location-based services. I think that's a compelling reason for consumers to get involved.
StockHouse: Are tracking technology companies preparing for the E911 initiative, such as Calgary-based Cell-Loc [V.CLQ], a good play right now?
Seybold: I'm very leery. With Qualcomm [QCOM] having bought Snaptrack, and CDMA technology already being based on GPS, I'm very leery about any other types of companies in that space at the moment. And I'm very concerned that in order for E911 to work, it has to be standard across all networks.
Dewey: It will be some time before that gets resolved. With Qualcomm being able to roll it into their chip sets, CDMA technology is certainly going to have a big step forward.
StockHouse: The last thing I wanted to ask you about is the timeline for 3G communications. It seems to be edging closer and closer, as companies such as Motorola announce their GPRS product. Is 3G close on the horizon, or just another hype-filled mirage?
Seybold: In the US, it's going to be very slow to come. It's already being deployed in Japan, but it's not the same standard as in Europe. I see it happening in Japan, Asia, in Europe.
Dewey: If you want to be aggressive in the terminology, Qualcomm calls it CDMA 2000, 1X, third generation. They're putting that in, probably, by the end of this year. It's really a semantics game.
Seybold: If a data rate of 144 Kb per second per cell site is considered 3G, then it's going to happen next year. If 3G is 384 Kb and above, then we're still three, four years away. If you say it's the standard that everybody's moving to and when is that standard going to happen, it's three years or more away....
stockhouse.ca |
