Nov 27,2000
Voice Challenges the Screen
In Race for the Wireless Web
By Thomas E. Weber
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
WHEN LAWRENCE GOETZ wants to check his stock portfolio on the run, he reaches for his cell phone. But the 27-year-old research assistant in Brooklyn, N.Y., doesn't have one of those wireless wonders with a built-in Web browser.
Instead, Mr. Goetz dials a toll-free number to reach a service called Tellme. He speaks a few words into the phone and listens as stock prices are read aloud to him. Compared with Web phones, he says, Tellme is fast, easy to use -- and, even better, it's free.
The wireless Web is growing fast, but its shape remains hazy. Little more than a year ago, the Net was agog over WAP, a standard for making Web pages for viewing on the screens of Internet-enabled cell phones. Since then, wireless companies have been pushing phones that let you tap out messages and key your way through menus.
Now, though, voice services are coming on strong. Yahoo! America Online recently unleashed phone services that let members listen to e-mail and news by calling a special number. Tellme, meanwhile, has gotten great reviews and is marketing itself aggressively.
WILL WE TALK or type our way through this untethered world? The question matters not only to consumers who want to access the Web anywhere, but also to thousands of businesses trying to figure out how best to exploit a wireless audience. For now, everyone is looking for clues to what the wireless future will look -- or sound -- like.
At Yahoo By Phone, the future sounds like a pleasant young lady. "Welcome to Yahoo," she tells callers who dial 800-MY-YAHOO. To use the service, you sign up for a free membership. After you log in by punching in an identification number and password, you can navigate through the service's voice-mail-style menus. Pressing 1 gets you e-mail; pressing 4 conjures up a weather forecast.
Yahoo also offers information on special pages that can be viewed by WAP phones. But Geoff Ralston, vice president of communications services, believes Yahoo By Phone will make a bigger splash in the coming months. That's because the voice service works on any telephone, not just the relatively rare Internet-enabled models. "This is anywhere, anytime access to Yahoo," he says.
Maybe, but is it useful? "Having your e-mail read aloud to you is generally a dreadful experience," says Ben Linder, vice president of marketing at Openwave Systems, a wireless software maker formed by the recent merger of Phone.com and Software.com. "Reading your e-mail on a screen is an easy, simple thing to do."
Phone.com became a sensation in the WAP boom thanks to its browser software. On a PC, users rely on a browser like Microsoft's Internet Explorer to grab and display Web pages. Phone.com created a tiny browser for wireless phones that can show Web information formatted according to the WAP standard. Users view the data on the phone's screen and type on the keypad.
BUT LATELY the bloom has come off WAP. Phone makers have been slow to roll out WAP-enabled handsets, and the services haven't always worked as advertised. Now some Web-site operators are growing skeptical. Creating a WAP version of an existing Web site can be difficult and expensive. To attract an audience, sites must be willing to pay for prime placement on phone companies' WAP menus. On top of that, the small screens and lack of a typewriter keyboard can make WAP surfing a frustrating experience.
"My gut tells me there's almost no customer for a WAP phone," says Barak Berkowitz, president of wireless concern OmniSky . "It's not a rich experience." Mr. Berkowitz thinks Internet users want a bigger screen and a more flexible method of entering data than a phone keypad. That's what he's selling in OmniSky, a service that lets owners of Palm and Handspring organizers tap the Internet through wireless modems and a special browser.
OmniSky customers get a better window onto the Web than WAP phone users, but they pay for the privilege. The service costs $40 a month and requires a $99 modem. And it too can seem painfully slow, especially to those accustomed to high-speed connections on their desktop computers.
All the wireless services face that problem. We've been spoiled by our PCs, and the wireless experience is bound to suffer by comparison. Ultimately the talk-versus-type question will come down to what kind of information people want. OmniSky is most likely to attract power users who always want to be connected.
For a mass market, at least in the near future, the needs are likely to be far simpler. That's why Tellme has such appeal. When you dial up the service at 800-555-TELL, you may not be able to perform a full-text search of the Web. But you can easily get driving directions, flight information, traffic reports and restaurant recommendations. "Voice is a pragmatic solution," says Mike McCue, Tellme's CEO.
Mr. McCue, it turns out, isn't a purist. Though he argues that voice has the advantage over screens in the early years of the wireless Web, he also thinks the two must converge so that consumers will be able to speak commands into the phone, then view results on a screen. When pressed, most wireless executives agree. Bryan Wargo, co-founder and president of 2Roam, which creates wireless sites for businesses, still prefers screens to voice services but adds: "When you can combine the two, that's the killer app." |
