The wireless industry has already admitted-repeatedly-that it jumped the gun a bit on the whole wireless Internet thing, acknowledged that its fruition still is more than a bit in the future and comes with a significant price tag attached. Still, many are slow to forgive and forget. The story is the same no matter how you look at it, but depending on who is spinning, it may appear very different.
Here is a sampling of related headlines I collected during the past week:
“Amazon’s m-commerce effort fizzles along with the wireless Web”
“Amazon axes Sprint PCS-will wireless distribution deals thrive?”
“Wireless net: deflated expectations”
“U.S. subscriber saturation in 2004 will push wireless carriers to 3G”
“Wireless Internet ready to take off in U.S.”
Translation: The wireless Internet was not ready yesterday and is not here today, but it is coming and will be crucial to the future success of the wireless industry.
On reports that the Amazon-Sprint PCS relationship is a bust, a Sprint PCS spokesman told RCR Wireless News last week that it is still “business as usual” as far as the carrier’s relationship with Amazon.com goes.
Yet, Seamus McAteer, a wireless analyst with Jupiter commented, “Amazon’s decision to deflate its mobile initiatives should come as no surprise. It will take at least three years before U.S. cellular subscribers have access to the types of services available to their Japanese counterparts today.”
On the other hand, “Vendors who want to take advantage of this opportunity will have to jump in quickly. Assuming that wireless Internet will wait for 3G deployment before it can take off is naive,” said John Friedenfelds, Infotech analyst. “Wireless Internet is coming to the U.S., one way or another, sooner rather than later.”
Alexander Resources said last week carriers will be forced to offer new high-speed wireless data, Internet and information services to counter declining growth in revenue caused by lower subscriber growth.
So we know that right now people are not buying books, looking for Starbucks or searching for movie listings in droves on the wireless Web. We know that at least for today voice remains the killer app. We know armies of engineers around the world are not losing their jobs along with everyone else and are working around the clock to try to figure out what the killer app for wireless data might be-for therein lies the wireless Holy grail. We know associated costs and challenges are huge.
We know this industry has to figure out where its future revenues are coming from. Maybe it is time to stop pointing fingers and get down to business.
