The Wireless Web Gains a Following Niche by Niche
The hype over Internet phones has sent the cellular industry on a roller coaster ride over the last year that has given even the most grizzled phone veterans a crippling case of whiplash.
Months before the phones even appeared, the euphoria was running at stratospheric levels, with backers pointing to the success of cellular Web access in Japan, where more than 30 million people have signed on over the last two years.
But just a few months after the phones hit the market, the backlash began, with industry pundits disparaging nearly every facet of the services--slow speeds, tiny screens, Stone Age graphics and unimaginative applications. The industry had turned on its darling, dismissing the Japanese successes as a cultural aberration.
While both die-hard supporters and the wireless Web naysayers continue to glare at each other, something has been happening beneath the fray--the wireless Web is actually beginning to catch on.
The numbers of users are neither as spectacular as backers prophesied nor as dismal as critics claim, but they are growing nonetheless.
Sprint PCS, which 18 months ago became the first U.S. carrier to introduce wireless Internet service, recently reported that its mobile Web service had 1 million users--half of them as monthly subscribers. AT&T; Wireless and Verizon Wireless, the next-largest mobile Internet providers, have more than a million customers combined.
The numbers represent just a fraction of the 100 million cellular phone users in the United States, but within their niche, the devices have found a solid following.
It turns out that their role in life--at least at this point--is not as be-all-end-all communications tools but rather as sophisticated gizmos that handle small, specific tasks.
Mike Fox, a software engineer in New Hill, N.C., uses his Internet phone just to check the weather on his 10-acre “hobby farm.”
“If I’m not sure of the weather, I dial into the wireless Web and get the Yahoo weather forecast to see if it will be cold enough that I have to blanket the horses, close up the stalls or empty and disconnect the water hoses,” Fox said. “That’s all I use it for.”
Albert Nurick, a 37-year-old Web designer in Houston, relies on his Internet phone to check movie listings and to bypass the high price of calling his mobile provider’s directory assistance service.
“They don’t make things very easy, and the navigation is tough . . . but I found that my usage has been increasing,” Nurick said.
The industry has begun to see people like Nurick as the near-term hope for Internet phones in this country. Experts see the phones as the foundation of a multibillion-dollar mobile-commerce market, allowing consumers to buy goods and services using their cell phones.
Analysts said the hurdle now is getting people over their initial skepticism and teaching them to customize their phone features to reach information quickly. It’s a daunting task.
Many observers compare today’s wireless Internet access to the early days of the desktop Internet--back before there were icons and graphics, and before there were links that instantly transported users from site to site.
In those days, the Internet had only text, navigating was a chore, and there were far fewer attractions for consumers. With the introduction of the easy-to-use World Wide Web, the Internet boomed.
The wireless world is still waiting for its equivalent of the easy-to-use browser, which opened the Internet to the masses in the mid-1990s.
It’s also waiting for a way to simplify or eliminate the need for typing words out using a cell phone keypad--one of the top complaints about Internet phones.
For example, sending a short “hi” requires tapping the “4” key two times for “H,” then three more times for “I.” Technologies such as predictive text software and voice-command systems are helping, but they have not yet solved the problem.
Today’s dominant mobile browser is based on Wireless Application Protocol, or WAP. The current version can’t handle Web site colors, requires special coding and has other drawbacks.
Some industry analysts believe that the problems with screen size and ease of use are simply insurmountable, and that the Internet will never flourish on a phone. They predict the device will eventually be squashed by wireless hand-held devices, which have larger screens, more computing power and, with extra equipment, can even handle phone calls.
“I just don’t think they have the right platform. . . . Typing in URLs on a 10-key pad is very, very annoying, and it’s very easy to make a mistake,” said Barney Dewey, a consultant and wireless data expert with the Andrew Seybold Group.
“It’s a horrible implementation of an interesting idea.”
What keeps people trying, though, is the huge installed base of mobile phones--more than 550 million worldwide and growing fast--an audience that dwarfs that of hand-helds and laptops.
So far, the top wireless attractions are WAP sites devoted to phone games--from trivia to kung fu--which have become a hit among users with time to kill. BuzzTime trivia, for example, said customers on Sprint PCS’ wireless Web service logged more than 1 million minutes playing its games in the first 49 days it was available.
After games, consumers dabble in news, financial information, sports scores and the like, analysts say.
After those basic features, wireless Web users splinter off, each finding the site or sites that are useful or appeal to their individual needs--just as consumers do on the so-called “wired Web.”
The American experience with the wireless Web has been far rockier than in Europe or Asia.
Worldwide, nearly 40 million people are now tapping into the Internet through mobile phones, according to the WAP Forum, an industry consortium.
The most popular is NTT DoCoMo’s i-Mode service. It offers all the basics--e-mail, stock quotes and banking--but its acclaim is that millions of its users pay to play inane games and to download ring tones and cartoon characters for their phones.
The second-largest mobile carrier in Japan, KDDI, has more than 6 million customers using its WAP-based EZ Web service.
Part of the problem in the American market is that people here are not nearly as addicted to their cell phones as the Japanese. In Japan, more than half of the population regularly uses a mobile phone, whereas in this country, penetration still hovers between 35% and 40%.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is the ubiquity of computers in the United States, where 60% of households have PCs and consumers have grown used to surfing the Web on powerful computers both at home and at work. That experience has led Americans to expect much more from a phone service that touts itself as the “wireless Web.”
By contrast, only 38% of Japanese households have computers, and more than half of i-Mode’s customers do not subscribe to a “wired” Internet service, according to Jupiter Research.
U.S. mobile carriers made the situation worse by fueling overblown consumer expectations through their advertising and public pronouncements about the revolutionary nature of the mobile Internet, analysts say. As a result, consumers in this country were underwhelmed when they compared their desktop Web to the Internet available through their phones.
“I got [wireless Web] a couple of months ago on a free promo. . . . So far, I haven’t really found much of a use for it beyond reading news while I sit on the john,” said one disaffected poster on an Internet discussion group about wireless Web service. “Am I missing the killer app here?”
The setbacks might have been fatal in an American market crowded with gizmos and gimmicks that promise more than they deliver. But several factors have helped the mobile Internet stave off complete failure.
Among the biggest was that phone makers simply began including WAP’s Internet capabilities with most models sold over the last year or so.
About 80% of the new mobile phones are Internet ready.
In addition, programmers began writing WAP games and applications to suit the devices, the Internet “biggies” got on the bandwagon with customized sites for phones, and the burden of per-minute pricing became less of a hurdle as users signed up for plans with hundreds of minutes each month.
WAP supporters say the wireless Web is steadily improving as programmers are starting to create more interesting offerings.
“When people find compelling things to do on the wireless Web, they will be hooked on those wireless devices,” said Scott Goldman, chief executive of the WAP Forum.
“If there were only crummy sites on the Internet, then nobody would be going to the Web.”
Things will improve further as mobile networks upgrade to higher data speeds and introduce always-on data connections and as cell phones add new technologies, such as Java capabilities, color screens and better Web navigation.
Analysts add that as the number of users increases, consumers will gain a more realistic understanding about the pros and cons of Internet phones--a situation that they believe will ultimately help spread the adoption of the wireless Web.
“The biggest challenge going forward now is ensuring that the expectations about wireless access to the Internet are realistic. . . . It’s very easy to get carried away,” Goldman said.
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Wireless Web Poised to Take Off?
Despite a slow start in the United States, industry watchers still believe millions of consumers will soon use wireless phones and other devices to tap into the Internet. The estimated number of wireless Internet users in North America and worldwide:
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Worldwide: 484.4 million
North America: 95.6 million
Sources: Ovum Research, EMarketer Inc.
