All About Wireless Initiatives : Catching the Next Wave

Given the nascent world economy and the pressure on Telecom operators and mobile carriers to boost the flagging ARPU (or Average Revenue Per User) from voice traffic due to steep price competition, new sources of business need to be found. Current thinking is to drive up data traffic as new source of revenue. This opens up a whole new spectrum of business opportunities and with it a whole set of new rules of the game for carriers.

Given the shining example of certain carriers in North Asia (NTT DoCoMo, comes to mind), there seems to be proof that data services, correctly marketed and implemented, can be a driving force to increase revenues, driving new business opportunities above and beyond traditional boundaries of the carriers.

There are 2 concurrent strategies to drive the data business. The first is to look at enhancing the existing success of current data services and the second, to look at the new opportunities provided by Java. We will probably see Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) deployed in short order throughout carriers in this region. This is the successor to Short Message Service (SMS) which we are all familiar with. I recall my first encounter with - I received my first message and next thing I know I am “texting” with the rest. This is the sort of viral potential that drives the success and popularity of SMS. Today, it is a necessary part of my communication with friends, family, and colleagues.

MMS is set to enhance the plain text experience of SMS with freeform text color, graphic, photos, with audio and video capabilities. The carriers have high expectations of MMS as a social and business enabler and have been gearing up to provide for this new service. MMS is “touted as the standard upon which growth in mobile messaging will be maintained and extended in 2.5 G and 3G mobile network.” (Ovum, April 2002)
Java is set to further enhance the user experience on mobile computing, It is the preferred technology platform of handset manufacturers in which games and applications will be deployed to mobile devices. Java (or in this case, Java 2 Micro Edition) forms the basic platform in which all other services can be developed on.

We can expect a whole slew of business opportunities to grow in wireless Java applications. What can we look forward to from our carrier?

FIRST WAVE : FIRST GENERATION OF JAVA SERVICES

The first wave of Java services would be games, infotainment and mobile office automation. We can expert simple single player games, multiplayer games and RPGs on our mobile devices. We can also expect to receive information from licensed providers like CNN, Yahoo, etc. Finance and stock information will also be standard fare.

In mobile offices, mobile groupware with email and file access capabilities on your mobile phone can be expected. This drives the opportunity for developers to provide services in Human Resource, ERP, CRM and other business related applications on mobile devices.

We will also see some integration to existing carrier infrastructure to provide contest information like pseudo location-based services in the early implementations. This will drive business opportunities for developers to integrate these services into their games, infotainment, and office applications. Simple location-based services for merchants (Like Starbucks rolling out their offers based on where you are) to integration to ERP and logistics opportunities can be foreseen.