ORLANDO, Fla.-BellSouth Wireless Data disclosed in greater detail its distribution strategy for its Interactive Paging service at PCS ’98 last week, where the company also announced a strategic alliance and conducted a developer’s seminar.
BellSouth released a list of 43 distributors made up of resellers, master dealers and dealers selling the Interactive Paging services, representing about 500 direct sales representatives and more than 3,000 retail stores. The effort gives BellSouth a much-needed presence in the target markets of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington D.C./Baltimore.
In entering the two-way messaging game, BellSouth will be taking on paging carriers that traditionally have larger and more-established methods of distribution, something analysts have noted will be a significant challenge to BellSouth’s effort.
However, Janet Boudris, senior vice president of strategic marketing, said the company expects the service to bring the hordes of horizontal users mobile data has chased in vain for so long.
“They’re no longer looking like a deer in the headlights when we explain our services,” she said. “It’s so intuitive.”
As for the application path expected to attract these hopeful customers, Boudris said financial information is the key. One of the many distributors of the paging service is DocuPro, a provider of real-time stock and other financial information, which has embedded its service into the pager and is selling it independently.
Other applications can be expected soon, as BellSouth aggressively is pursuing third-party developer interest. A major effort in this was a sold-out, full-day application developer workshop held Thursday here at PCS’ 98.
About 50 developers were scheduled to participate in the program, which detailed the functionality of the BellSouth RAMpowertool version 2 and the software development kit from Research in Motion, which makes the Inter@ctive Pager 950-the device used for the BellSouth service.
“Our PCS ’98 workshop is building on the momentum of the launch of the Interactive Paging Service by providing developers comprehensive instruction on easy-to-use tools with which they can create exciting and leading edge applications,” said Tom D’Alleva, director of network product management for BellSouth.
RAMpowertool includes software modules that run on mobile devices and fixed host computers supporting over-the-air applications upgrades and is compatible with Windows NT and Unix platforms.
Finally, BellSouth announced a strategic alliance with RIM and Sybase to give the Inter@ctive pager a version of Sybase’s Adaptive Server mobile database called UltraLite.
UltraLite allows organizations to extend business applications such as sales-force automation and service scheduling to the pager. All three will market the solution to their customers. The companies also are working to integrate the technology into the software development kit.
