EMERGING DEVICES

A broad range of applications for the Wireless Internet will warrant
a variety, of access devices. The incumbent handset manufacturers—
Ericsson, Motorola, and Nokia—have the benefit of
years of experience in building consumer terminals, integrated
voice service, and have expertise in next-generation wireless air
interface standards. Many of today’s products already offer
WAP microbrowsers and SMS. Competition will be intense
among the many manufacturers vying for market share, and this
will ultimately benefit consumers through lower prices.

One of the major challenges for the handset vendors is to
design phones with simplified text entry and Web navigation.
Typing out text messages on cellular handsets is cumbersome,
as is navigating through the menus of many phones. Features
such as Tegic’s T9 predictive text input are useful but require
some practice to become familiar enough to be useful.
A new range of products is emerging that will compete with
the traditional handset for a share of the Wireless Internet terminal
market. Palm and Handspring are adding wireless functionality
to PDAs, as are new Pocket PC handhelds from Sony,
Hewlett-Packard, and Compaq. The competition among these
devices will be intense as manufacturers jockey for position in
this rapidly growing device market segment. All of these devices
will help build the momentum of the enterprise market as they
become tools for corporate users to access company data and
read and respond to emails.

One challenge to creating wireless applications has been the
ability to write programs that could be loaded and run on
devices with proprietary operating systems. Devices such as cellular
phones have traditionally used an operating system that
did not allow for new programs to be added, and most manufacturers
do not release details that would allow developers to
integrate a new application into an existing device’s software.
PDAs have been easier to develop applications for, because
platforms such as Palm and WinCE were created with software
developers in mind. The drawback to PDA software has been
the lack of wireless connectivity.

As cellular phones and PDAs absorb each other’s features
and abilities it’s becoming harder to tell the difference between
a PDA and a phone. PDAs that are capable of connecting to the
Internet and making voice calls now compete with cell phones
that are able to run and display applications. One thing that
these two types of devices share is common software platforms
that enable users to add and use wireless applications.
Some device manufacturers are also designing handhelds that
integrate other devices such as digital camera, music player, and
others that result in some interesting combinations. These new
all-in-one, “Swiss Army Knife”-style mobile devices may not necessarily
meet the needs of the power user, but will eliminate the
need to carry multiple gadgets. For instance, Samsung and Sprint
PCS offer an MP3 phone and in Japan, camera phones have been
available for the past couple of years. Leading device designers
such as the United Kingdom firm of Seymour Powell are planning
future devices that may no longer look like today’s cellular
phones, but take into account people’s usage habits, resulting in
products that make viewing, listening, entering information, and
interaction with the device much simpler and intuitive. While
some of these new hybrid devices may be compelling, we do not
believe that they will ever completely replace the basic wireless
phone. Additionally, any large scale phone replacement cannot
occur until the proper wireless network architecture is in place,
which we believe will not occur until 2004.

As device manufacturers offer more functionality in their products:
color screens, always on access, camera, music players, faster
processors, more memory—these all will consume more power.
Vendors will need to develop power minimization strategies in
addition to new features. The current line of products include:

• Basic wireless phone. The primary functions of basic wireless
phones include voice calls, Caller ID, voice mail, short
messaging, basic address lists, and Web browsing. The units
have small displays.

• Smartphones. These devices are basically wireless phones
with PDA-like features embedded in them. They have a separate
alpha keyboard, calendar, address book, personal information
management (PIM), and color screen. An example is
the Nokia 9210 Communicator (Figure 4-2).

• Two-way pagers. The primary benefits of two-way paging
are the reliable national coverage, strong in-building reception,
and long battery life compared to cellular phones. The
major drawback of the messaging-only pagers is that their
Web browsing capabilities are much less advanced than those
of smartphones, pocket PCs, and PDAs. Examples include
the RIM Blackberry and Motorola.

• PDAs/pocket PCs (with embedded or external modems).
Personal organizers, many of which now come with a color
screen and have the ability to use Windows applications such
as Excel and Word. These include Palm, Compaq iPAQ,
Casio, Handspring, and Hewlett Packard.
(See Chapter 2 for more detailed information on operating
systems like Palm, Symbian/Epoc, WinCE, and J2ME—a version
of Java.) 138

ADDING VISION TO VOICE

When the average consumer thinks of wireless technology
most have a difficult time imagining anything but voice services.
We are conditioned to think of cellular or wireless devices
as things you talk into and not look at or read.

Even the youngest users quickly understand how to use
today’s cellular phones—dial and talk. It’s not uncommon to
observe young children grabbing and chatting on a parents’ cell
phone, even if it’s not really turned on. The point is that they
get the concept of wireless voice. Unfortunately most cell
phone users (even non-toddlers) do not use the many voicerelated
features embedded in their phones, much less envision
how they might someday use them for nonvoice applications.
Wireless devices will start with basic features and gradually
evolve as technology and end user perceptions grow. This is
not unlike the evolution of the personal computer. Many of you
will remember when computers were very limited, and you
have witnessed the evolution from a text-only device with one
method of input, through the stage of simple graphics and
crude sounds (buzzers!), and finally to the full a multimedia
PCs of today.

Applications track the capabilities of devices and networks
as well. Early PCs were connected to nothing more than the
electrical outlet on the wall and were capable of sharing only
via the popular “sneaker network”—put the files on a floppy
(remember those 5.25-inch disks that truly were “floppy”?) and
walk them to the intended destination.

PC applications moved from simple text menu–driven programs
to applications that use color, pointing devices, multimedia
images, and concert quality sound—and these are just
the tax preparation programs! Modern day computer games are
capable of experiences that are closely approach virtual reality.
Wireless Internet devices will follow the same path, albeit
in a condensed timeframe. The first nonvoice wireless applications
will be those that use simple text—displays have become
larger with better resolution to accommodate even this simple
text. The next stage will be very simple graphics not unlike the
simple graphics first experienced on PCs—if you look too
closely, you’ll see the same jagged edges and low resolution. As
network data speeds, device processing power, memory, and
displays improve we will see wireless applications that can take
advantage of still images, sound files, and finally the 3G vision
of fully wireless multimedia.

This gradual evolution is important for the adoption of applications.
In part this will allow consumers to experiment and
learn how best to utilize this new method of Internet access. It’s
difficult for most consumers to assess the value of wireless applications
that they have not yet experienced. In turn, this makes it
hard to determine exactly what applications users will be willing
to pay for and even harder to understand how much they will pay.
Even applications that enable relatively obvious services such as
weather alerts or driving directions cannot be fully appreciated
out of the context of a real world usage situation.

MOBILITY VALUE

As the Wireless Internet adds new value to staying connected,
short response times assure the validity of information.
Productivity is no longer confined to a specific location. There
are potentially hundreds of applications that will drive the
demand for Wireless Internet access, including multimedia
messaging, which will make it possible to combine conventional
text messages with richer content types—photographs,
images, voice clips, and eventually video clips. Two of the
fastest-growing industries in the world—entertainment and
mobile communications—may profit hugely as lifestyles
change, with people experiencing more and rapid bursts of free
time. Fast access to entertainment is increasingly appealing to
all sections of society and many wireless handsets and devices
are already used for entertainment. SMS services led the revolution
in enjoying entertainment on the move, but we are now
on the edge of a new era, as the Wireless Internet begins to
offer even more sophisticated services.
Increasing demand for Wireless Internet access comes from
the convergence of Internet and cellular telephony. The
Internet or World Wide Web (WWW) has had a profound
impact on our lives, both on a personal and business level.