For while Singapore’s big three mobile network operators quietly gave birth to high speed GPRS wireless data networks and have also set their sights on third-generation (3G) mobile telecom licenses, dull content is still dull content, no matter how fast you send it.
News headlines? I’ve got a paper. Movie listings? In the paper. Stock quotes? Paper. Traffic News? I’m on the subway. Weather? No good if I’ve left my umbrella at home. Dating service? I’m attached. E-banking? Ah, now that’s more like it and I don’t mind paying a bit extra per transaction for the privilege. Why? Because being able to transfer funds or check my bank balance on the move embraces the full potential that 3G promises –the ability for people to get on with life’s little chores and necessities from anywhere and at anytime. I’m not alone in thinking wireless banking could give 3G a good head of steam. The Yankee Group, a wireless, Internet and e-business research and consulting service (www.yankeegroup.com), predicts that e-banking will triple its subscriber base by the end of 2002.
However, simply being able to cringe at your overdraft on the top of a mountain isn’t going to be enough. For a true look into the future of wireless content, we need only take a quick sightseeing trip on the high-speed service out of Tokyo heading to a station near you soon.
Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo Inc.’s Internet service ‘i-mode’ could be the model for others to follow. For a start I wouldn’t need to buy a newspaper because i-mode gives me access to a wide range of different paper titles and Internet news services. There’s also email, event listings, phone books, train timetables, financial information, city and leisure guides, a dictionary and games plus a nifty little service called ‘i-area’ that lets me find information on shops and restaurants specific to the location I’m calling from. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
There I am a bewildered foreigner in downtown Nagasaki - hungry, confused and with no place to stay. I could refer to my dog-eared travel book and spend a frustrating hour leafing through irrelevant information that’s probably already out of date. But armed with my trusty phone I, like 30 million other i-mode subscribers, could peruse a free lifestyle magazine delivered via mobile email three times a week. It gives me customised shopping, dining and entertainment content closely tailored to my pre-programmed commuting pattern.
Duly fed and watered I am now in need somewhere to stay. Thanks to hotel and accommodation broker Sino.net, a subsidiary of e4asia, that’s no problem. They have launched a travel portal for i-mode, WAP and PDA users. I can connect to 2500 hotels throughout the world, check room availability and make a booking directly from my mobile. Now isn’t that much more useful than a horoscope service? Knowing my ideal partner is a Dragon whose rising star is in the 13th cusp of my twelfth house but only on a full moon with a following wind won’t do me much good if I’m lost down the back alleys of Kyoto!
According to Sino.net, launching a compatible site for i-mode was the top priority in the development process, though the company still considered WAP-compatibility important as well.
"Our hotel partners increasingly want access to their services via i-mode, it being the most convenient mobile technology media at present, leaving WAP at second place," said Clemens Bechter, President of e4asia.
Now if only i-mode could team up with Steven Donahue, a language teacher at Miami Dade Community College in Florida. He’s developed a mobile language learning programme for American soldiers serving in Afghanistan who might want to tell their Taliban foe to put down their Kalashnikovs in the local lingo. When the ‘Get By in Japanese’ module becomes available, not only could I then find my hotel using a GPS tracking phone but also ask the receptionist for a wakeup call without unintentionally insulting her honour.
Steve Lewis, Vice President of Marketing at Intava Gravity (www.intava.com) who is developing the ‘take anywhere’ language learning software, is confident that such a service will drive the growth of mobile commerce in the coming years.
"The distance learning category of the Web is very exciting, and this is a good example of what can be done in that area," he said. "Allowing soldiers to learn the Afghan language is not so different from allowing Spanish-speaking citizens in the United States to learn English as a second language, for example. It's an ideal application for wireless, and could easily be turned into a commercial application."
Even without this little add-on, the sheer variety of i-mode's features has got millions of students and businessmen, young or old peering at their screens on trains, in shops and in the street. The Japanese must be doing something right because, three years after its debut, i-mode is set to launch in Europe with DoCoMo’s Dutch partner KPN Mobile.
KPN Vice President of Corporate Development Mark de Jong is confident that the service will be a success: "We expect many new customers. Additionally, we expect revenue per-customer to rise as well. In Japan, it’s hard to find any ‘plain’ mobile phones without mobile Internet functionality. Given time, I expect Dutch users to switch to i-mode as well.”
KPN has made arrangements with more than 100 companies such as supermarkets, games suppliers, banks and news services to deliver compatible Internet sites. While some of the services will be offered for free, others will require a monthly subscription fee.
KPN have done their market research well and included in their mobile buffet both a radio and MTV-like television station popular with teenagers and students. They’ve seen the lucrative Teen Train heading down the tracks and made sure their station has something worth getting off for.
Recent Yankee Group studies show that 65 percent of teenagers are likely to be wireless by the end of 2005. It’s these kids who have most readily adopted all things mobile and are responsible for making cutting-edge mobile products and their vendors into household names. Any content provider worth their salt ignores pubescent spending power, worth US$153 billion in 1999, at their peril.
I have a prediction to make. In a few years' time hospitals world-wide will be inundated with ageing teens clutching arthritic thumbs, a malady brought on by their unquenchable urge to email and SMS each other using the single digit dance of one pinkie typing. The boffins at i-mode have not been slow to exploit this growth market and have come up with ‘Sha-mail’ or ‘Picture Mail’. Sha-mail phones come equipped with a mini camera that takes colour snapshots that can be sent to other compatible phones or as an attachment to regular e-mail addresses. Indeed, number three mobile firm J-Phone Co Ltd, which is operated by Japan Telecom and British mobile giant Vodafone, have been able to attract 3.5 million users for this service out of a total subscriber base of 11.7 million.
Indeed, according to Adam Zawel, a wireless commerce analyst at the Yankee Group, most people’s first taste of 3G will be through messaging, which explains why Ericsson is now promoting its MMS (Multimedia Messaging Services) - a fancier version of SMS that lets users also attach video and audio media.
Yankee also predicts that mobile games will enjoy the greatest demand. That could be why U.S. Wireless media firm Mobliss has partnered with games developer Fremantle Media to provide wireless games based on the popular American quiz shows The Price is Right and Family Feud. The wireless format will be similar to the television versions and both will carry subtle advertising messages or sponsored merchandise placements for revenue generation.
"Wireless carriers are looking for compelling applications that are going to get their users excited about using data services," says Brian Levin, President of Mobliss. "This is a great example of media entertainment that plays on well-known franchises."
Mobile phone producer Nokia has also got in on the act and announced several new deals with British software developers that will enhance its position in the wireless games market. Nokia said it was teaming up with British developers Kuju Entertainment and Rage Software to deliver soccer and golf games to its mobile phones. These two games will work on the EPOC mobile operating system created by Symbian, a large joint venture consortium of leading wireless product manufacturers, including Psion, Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola.
In a movie-mad city like Singapore, content providers would be somewhat remiss not to exploit Singaporeans’ love of the silver screen. Riot Entertainment have not been slow to spot the potential by securing the rights to develop interactive content based on the latest movie releases such as Lord of the Rings, X-Men and the soon-to-be released Spiderman.
These will range from simple SMS text message games to graphically rich multi-player adventures that should be available in Europe, Asia and the U.S. by the summer. If games based on blockbusters are, as New Line Cinema hopes, as popular as the official Internet movie sites, which have had visitors by the million, they’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. Riot-E has already recognised the potential of the seemingly insatiable Japanese market. It’s gone into partnership with local company Cybird to deliver wireless content and games to the Nippon Networks.
If that wasn’t enough, Back to the Future, The Mummy Returns and the Jurassic Park trilogy are just some of the Hollywood movies coming to a Nokia wireless phone near you soon. Members of Club Nokia in the U.S. and the Asian-Pacific region can now download graphics, ringing tones, text, multimedia messages and mobile games related to more than 100 of Universal Studios' top film and television titles.
So when I do eventually join the 21st century and buy a phone, it looks like I will be joining the millions of other surfers already happily ditching their newspapers in favour of developing cranky thumbs. Japan has set the standard that others may have to follow. They’ve proved there is a receptive market out there willing to pay for innovative and practical content that entertains, educates and informs on the move. Carriers who don’t take heed and hop on board the 3G Express may well find out too late that they’ve missed the boat.
P.S. I was totally amazed when I finally stopped to add up all of the money I had been spending on advertising my web site. Fifty here, a hundred there; pretty soon it had become a substantial amount of money and I wasn't seeing much in return. On top of all that, I was pouring more than I care to even think about into Google and Yahoo ads.. That's why I created Article Submitter! Now you can drive insane traffic to your web site using the magic of article submission and it all happens practically on autopilot!
Go to readmystuff.net/articlesubmitter for more information.