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Technology Stocks : METRICOM - Wireless Data Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sherman Chen who wrote (3266)	5/11/2001 9:42:38 AM
From: Sir Auric Goldfinger	Respond to of 3376

Survey Shows Declining Interest In Shopping on Mobile Phones BY KEVIN J. DELANEY Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Consumer interest in buying things online using mobile phones has dropped sharply from last summer, adding to the mounting skepticism about the prospects for new wireless services. In a survey of 1,600 wireless customers in January, only 12% of surveyed mobile-phone users in the U.S., Europe and Asia said they intended to use Internet-enabled phones for any type of transaction, down from 32% in June. The decline was most marked in the U.S., where 3% of those surveyed planned to buy things using their cellphones, compared with 34% in June. In Europe, 14% were interested in mobile commerce, down from 29%. "The scale of the drop was quite a surprise," said Paul Collins, a London-based consultant for A.T. Kearney, which along with the Judge Institute of Management, Cambridge University's business school, released the results this week. Mr. Collins blames the decline on the failings of the first wireless Internet offerings that hit the market last year and says sales of cellular handsets could suffer as skeptical consumers continue to use other ways to go online. Mobile operators around the world have invested massively in licenses and infrastructure that will allow them to offer faster wireless Internet access. But research has raised questions about how soon and how much consumers will be willing to pay for the more sophisticated services. Several other studies also point in the same direction. European consumers surveyed by Jupiter Research earlier this year showed little interest in any mobile application besides e-mail. Similarly, cellular users polled by Forrester Research in Germany at the end of last year were on average "not interested" in a menu of possible mobile Internet applications. Perhaps worse news for the cellular carriers, those consumers and European businesses surveyed by Gartner Group during the winter showed an aversion to paying much -- if anything -- for wireless Internet services. Some retailers, such as online bookseller Amazon.com Inc., have scaled back or eliminated m-commerce initiatives because of lackluster customer interest. Mobile operators and handset makers generally concede that the first generation of services using wireless application protocol, known as WAP, or its equivalents have disappointed consumers with slow speeds and limited offerings. But they say network upgrades this year and next will make them more attractive and win over customers en masse. At the same time, an explosion in the use of wireless instant messaging world-wide could help make those cellular users more receptive to m-commerce services down the road. A total of 75% of European and 57% of Japanese mobile-phone users send text messages over the phones, according to the A.T. Kearney/Judge Institute survey. And 27% of U.S. users do the same. Some carriers say it is wrong to totally write off mobile commerce. "I couldn't imagine that we've seen the growth of WAP we've seen without the sustaining of m-commerce on our portal and network," said Peter Lisle, a program manager for wireless Internet services at Cellnet, British Telecommunications PLC's United Kingdom mobile operator. Mr. Lisle said mobile-commerce statistics weren't available for Cellnet, but the carrier has registered as many as 80 million page impressions -- the number of single pages accessed -- per month on its WAP portal site. While the majority of new handsets come with WAP or similar wireless Internet capability, only 16% of cellular users world-wide owned one of those more advanced phones as of January, according to the A.T. Kearney/Judge Institute survey. Like other industry analysts, A.T. Kearney's Mr. Collins says mobile operators need to replace their concentration on network technology with a focus on constructing offerings that will interest consumers. A lack of interest in wireless Internet services and concerns about ease of use were the two issues cited most frequently by survey respondents.