CHICAGO-Partnerships are the key to success in the wireless Internet space, was the resounding theme at last week’s PCIA GlobalXChange convention keynote session.
“The wireless Internet is like the proverbial wild West or the first blast off into space,” Janiece Webb, senior vice president and general manager with Motorola Inc.’s Personal Networks Group, said on Thursday’s “The future of the wireless world,” keynote session. “We don’t know what lies ahead.”
The skyrocketing use of mobile phones has created a fundamental change. Customers’ personal and business lives are merging, she said. Within the next three years, Webb predicts 1 billion wireless Internet users, with more handsets connected to the Web than personal computers.
“We’ve done more consumer research in the last couple of years than in the history of the corporation,” said Webb. “We don’t use the word proprietary anymore. We’re building alliances and delivering the future faster by using standards. We’re not holding our customers and partners hostage.”
Motorola Inc. has teamed with a variety of partners, ranging from Cisco for an Internet Protocol network platform to content providers like America Online Inc. and OracleMobile Inc. The company also has established centers of excellence as well as development centers across the globe. Keys to success in the mobile Internet arena will be an open architecture as well as partnerships with local partners.
“Working with third-party developers is the key to our strategy,” said Webb. “We’re teaming with academia, corporations and two guys with a dog and a garage.”
Partnerships will allow companies to make wireless Internet communications simple, personal and relevant, she said.
“People only care about things 20 miles from where they’re at,” said Webb. “If it’s not intuitive, people won’t use it-We have to reach out to others to co-create end-to-end solutions. We have to learn to mate with uncomfortable mates. We have to.”
Dennis Patrick, president of AOL Wireless, outlined the elements of what will drive the success of his company, which is moving from its well-entrenched Internet service provider position in the fixed Internet world to the wireless arena.
“We won’t be talking about penetration in the next few years because we’ll achieve ubiquity,” Patrick predicted. “We won’t be talking about data-enabled handsets because they all will be.”
Content and functionality is one area that will drive the success of AOL, said Patrick. Content must be compelling, fresh and add value
“Our strategy is different from our competitors’,” he said. “It’s important to put a product where it is most useful and keep other products in different locations.”
Branding will determine the success of those competing in the wireless Internet space, said Patrick.
“The market is flooded already,” he said. “It’s important to have value to deliver and guide customers through the clutter.”
User interfaces must be as easily accessed as they are on landline connections, he said. And the multi-platform integration must be intuitive and easy.
“The customer-friendly user interface challenge is facing us again. That skill set is important,” he said. “Our strategy is not to deliver technology convergence, but merge different platforms into the user interface and empower users to make their own decisions. We’d like to see an AOL membership proposition in each environment.”
And partnerships are the key to success, Patrick reiterated from other speakers at the session.
“We’ve seen this movie before,” he said. “When we introduced wireless, the commentary was, `Who owns the customer?’, as if it is a zero sum game. It’s a win-win opportunity because the demand for services is highly elastic. There’s an opportunity before us to grow the pie.”
Patrick also highlighted the company’s recent announcement with Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, which will allow AOL to put its email and instant messaging services on DoCoMo’s highly popular I-mode service. The service will be featured in retail outlets, and the companies will cross market the service to DoCoMo customers, he said.
“Both companies have enjoyed success by focusing on the same thing-the mass market and creating and easy and accessible mass market product.”
