If you’ve been following the wireless market space the last couple of years, you probably know that it’s one of the most exciting and dynamic industries to hit the radar screen. There’s never a dull moment when it comes to new developments and new products becoming available. With those kinds of dynamics, customer demands and expectations are constantly changing as well. Once a new product is released, a newer and more functional version is released by a competitor. From the consumer’s perspective, the choices are never-ending. From the producer’s perspective, competition is fierce.

The big issue really is to understand where the wireless bandwagon is headed and what we need to do as business owners and consumers. It’s hard to imagine that overall revenue from mobile voice and data services is set to reach 130 billion euros by 2006, up from original estimations of 95 billion euros in 2001 by data researchers at Analysys. Assuming those estimations are even close to being accurate, the opportunity for wireless applications and services is staggering! To achieve this adoption rate, however, applications and functionality must be developed to improve the value proposition for potential business and consumer users. In both Europe and Japan, the “killer app” is SMS, which we’ll discuss in Chapter 9. SMS provides the capability to send and receive text messages as well as the standard information services (news, stock quotes, and so on) over standard wireless phones. Short messaging service experienced exponential growth in Europe once it reached market penetration of 20 percent. Overall, more than 2 billion SMS messages are sent throughout Europe monthly, as compared to the 30 million people a week that use paging services for instant messaging in the United States. In short, wireless instant messaging may be the application that provides a foothold for the adoption of mobility in the United States. For a comparison on the growth of wireless in the United States, see Figure 2.10.

In the next decade, wireless devices will provide access to the Internet for more users than computers. Although new technologies will provide bandwidth at speeds equivalent to today’s wireline connections, the user experience on the wireless Internet will still be significantly different from that on the wired Internet. More emphasis will be placed on the localization, personalization, timeliness, and convenience of information and transactions. These and other topics are covered in Chapter 9.

Summary
As you’ve seen in this chapter, the business models around mobility are not too unlike what we’ve seen in the “e” world, or the e-business-driven environment. Companies usually take either a customer- or consumerdriven approach, or a business-driven approach. In other words, applications are built around business-to-customer models or business-to-business models. Examples of the consumer-driven mobile applications that are offering compelling value propositions are wireless gaming and location-based applications. Business drivers range from mobilizing the sales force and field service applications to executive dashboards and wireless local area networks such as WiFi. In the next chapter, we’ll introduce the various mobile devices on the market and where they fit into your wireless strategy.

Taken From : Enterprise Guide to Gaining Business Value from Mobile Technologies

Filed under: Generate Money

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