Wireless Revelers Stage Their Own Mardi Gras
If the economy, and the nation as a whole, is suffering from “irrational exuberance,” then surely this city, this week, is ground zero.
Mardi Gras revelry fills the streets of the famous French Quarter, and inside the New Orleans convention center is the suit-and-tie equivalent: a massive trade show for the hot-hot wireless communications industry.
But the exuberance pulsing through the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Assn.’s annual confab is mostly justified.
That’s because the world has discovered that wireless portable devices--phones and hand-held mini-computers--represent a crucial new way to deliver the Internet and a host of customized information services to on-the-go consumers. These days, consumers are subscribing in record numbers, stock prices of wireless businesses are soaring, and industry deals and alliances are being struck daily.
So technology’s luminaries have been drawn here, with a first-time keynote speech on Monday from Microsoft’s Bill Gates and major appearances throughout the three-day trade show by top executives from Sun Microsystems, Compaq Computer, Amazon.com, America Online and others from the computer world.
In fact, companies like Microsoft and others can ill afford to miss out on the wireless phone market, which is expected to have 1 billion customers by 2002, up from 450 million at the end of 1999. And more mobile phones are produced and sold worldwide each year than personal computers and cars combined.
“People used to discount [wireless phone Web access] because of the slow speed and because of the small screen size,” said Andrew Sukawaty, president of Sprint PCS, the first U.S. carrier to launch a nationwide wireless Internet service for consumers. “Then [the computer industry] woke up to the fact that people are more likely to use one of these devices to look for information than they are likely to be at their PC.”
That realization spurred MCI WorldCom’s pending deal to buy Sprint to get its fast-growing wireless unit, and has been the motivation behind mega mergers involving Britain’s Vodafone AirTouch and investments by Microsoft in various wireless entities.
Wall Street has taken notice, too, as evidenced by a string of major initial public offerings from the likes of Phone.com, a maker of mini-browsers used in mobile devices, AT&T;’s plan to create a tracking stock for its wireless assets, and the meteoric rise in the stock price of Qualcomm Inc., the San Diego wireless company.
Many companies at this week’s trade show unveiled vast improvements in technologies such as voice-recognition, battery life, security and wireless data transmission speeds--all considered critical to the widespread adoption of wireless phones as a consumer’s do-everything device.
Meanwhile, crowds of conventioneers ogled and tested the sleek and feature-packed phones shown by industry leaders Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola as well from LG InfoComm and newcomers such as San Diego-based NeoPoint.
Samsung Electronics unveiled new U.S. phones with Spanish-language text and voice prompts as well as the first U.S. mobile phone to include built-in MP3 technology, which will allow users to download and play music from the Internet.
And mobile carriers such as AT&T; Wireless, BellSouth and Vodafone AirTouch are racing to add features and content that will help make their products indispensable--a development that mirrors a similar rush for content in the early days of the Web.
On Tuesday in New Orleans, Samsung announced a deal that will give Yahoo space on its Internet-ready mobile phones, and Bell Atlantic teamed up with Amazon.com in a similar deal. IBM unveiled software that it said would make it easier to convert information from existing Web sites for use on the small wireless phone screens.
And in a new spin on advertiser-supported services, Culver City-based DSI Technology’s Totallyfreepaging.com unit struck a deal with Microsoft to allow pager customers to receive free customized news and financial alerts as well as e-mail from the software firm’s MSN Hotmail service.
The service is for local usage and not unlimited, and is provided free in exchange for demographic information that helps the company target ads.
The trend at the heart of the action, the convergence of the Internet and wireless hand-held devices, will make the mobile world “the defining industry of this century,” said John Zeglis, head of AT&T;’s wireless group.
