The Personal Communications Industry Association made another move designed to evolve the association into one that serves the global mobile Internet market.
PCIA last week announced the PCIA Global Initiative, a new PCIA division designed to provide consumer and market data for the mobile Internet and m-commerce markets.
“What we recognized was many companies out there were somewhat new to this industry, but all are interdependent. It’s going to take all of them to create products and services to meet the demands of the customer,” said PCIA President Jay Kitchen. “This will enable companies to reduce the time to market, cut through the clutter of conflicting technical factions and move beyond the uncertainty of untested business models,”
Details of the initiative are sketchy, however. PCIA said a new steering committee made up of Citigroup, Finnish operator Sonera Corp., TD Waterhouse Group Inc. and Visa International will meet sometime in September to discuss the group’s priorities. The steering board will make joint decisions with the PCIA board.
Two other standing committees will work on marketing and technical issues associated with offering the wireless Internet. This means PCIA Global Initiative will collaborate with groups such as the WAP Forum and the GSM Association.
“The challenge we all face is recognizing where the industry is going,” said Kitchen. “A fine example would be Ford (Motor Co.) and Qualcomm (Inc.)’s announcement that they will equip cars with wireless Internet. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know what kind of services and products that would be available to consumers three-to-four years down the road?”
Members will include content providers, carriers, network computing vendors, Internet service providers, software developers, device and semiconductor manufacturers and application service providers. They don’t have to be a member of PCIA itself nor a U.S. company.
“If we’re really going to meet the needs of the industry, we have to be global,” said Kitchen.
The cornerstone of the PCIA Global Initiative will be global research on consumer trends and attitudes toward the mobile Internet, said Kitchen. PCIA has teamed with Yankelovich, a 50-year old group that predicts behaviors of U.S. consumers, to provide that research. Hogan & Hartson L.L.P. will provide the group with global regulatory guidance, while firms such as McKinsey & Co. Renaissance Worldwide Strategy Inc. plan to offer strategic insight.
PCIA Global Initiative is in the early stages of recruitment. It launched last week with the following members: Adver-tising.com, Air2Web, Citigroup, GWcom Inc., Idetic, Littlefeet Inc., PCS Innovations, Prodigy Communications, Psion, Sonera Corp., TD Waterhouse Group Inc., Ticketmaster, Visa International and Weather.com.
PCS Innovations will serve as the lead technical liaison for the initiative, driving its coordination with multiple standards groups. Psion also will play a key role in managing the group’s activities around technical issues, said PCIA.
PCIA is attempting to reinvent itself as it faces dwindling membership, employee turnover, and an annual trade show in September that will be absent some large traditional vendors.
The association earlier this year repositioned and renamed the show PCIA GlobalXChange to reflect the association’s move to capture more players in the wireless Internet market. Still, large vendors such as Lucent Technologies Inc., Nokia Corp. and L.M. Ericsson have decided not to exhibit at the show this year in Chicago.
Many industry players have seen PCIA as an unnecessary duplication of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association as the wireless market matures and consolidates. Sprint PCS, Lucent, Nokia and Ericsson were among the companies that did not renew their membership this year.
Moreover, PCIA is competing with CTIA’s Wireless Data Forum, which has more than 100 members promoting the wireless data industry.
With the tremendous growth prospects of the wireless Internet market, however, PCIA believes there is plenty of business to go around.
“We’re looking at the overall picture,” said Kitchen. “As we move forward, we’re recognizing there is an exploding number of companies involved (in wireless data) … PCIA will continue as an evolving association, constantly looking at change in the association to match the changes in the industry.”
