Digitalwall: 3G Time Comes (2) Mobile Internet Is Not the Killer Application

"Mobile Internet" is not an easy thing to do.

With the downslide in handset sales and phone bill income, and the high speed of infiltration of the fixed-line Internet access, the mobile Internet, which was once the hope of mobile equipment manufacturers and telecom operators around the world, is today much more expected by both.

There's no need to say anything about the failure of WAP. In my other articles before, I have explained a lot. In general, the failure of the mobile Internet can be attributed to three factors: price, data rate and handset.

Charged in accordance with the length of service time, the WAP-based mobile Internet service in the past was very expensive. Comparatively, GPRS (the so-called 2.5G) adopts the packet billing model, whereby subscribers connected with the Internet will not be charged unless there is a transmission of data. That has provided an initial solution to the problem of price. The packet billing model will be also adopted for the 3G mobile Internet in the future.

Currently, the actual data rate of GPRS could reach over 20 Kbps, and it will be even higher for 3G in the future. Although there are still challenges in this regard, data rate is at least not an insurmountable obstacle. In addition, as the volume of data transmitted from WAP sites to mobile phones are usually small (as compared with the case of the computer-based Internet ), such data rate would be sufficient.

The biggest challenge, therefore, is the handset. As we all know, there are numerous handset manufacturers and that every model of each manufacturer has its own specifications on screen size, pixels, built-in browser version and operation interface (even the number of keys), just like there were a lot of different browser versions to consider about for the making of a webpage many years ago.

That increases the difficulty for content developers (as contents must comply with many handset specifications, the costs would increase significantly), as well as users, who then will be apt to reject the service. Unfortunately, the problem has not been solved even in the 3G time. Handset manufacturers are still acting on their own.

A unified handset specification is one of the key reasons for the success of i-Mode in Japan. Without overcoming this last obstacle, it would be difficult for the mobile Internet to infiltrate into the mass market.

Yet, even if all those three obstacles are overcome, to what extent would the mobile Internet infiltrate into the market? As a veteran with an experience of five years in the Internet industry and two years in the wireless communication sector, I am increasingly doubtful about the development of mobile Internet.

The most critical part is the fact that the mobile Internet is not the need of the majority people. In addition to gaming and simple document processing, one of the most important applications of the desktop in your home is to access the Internet. Even so, about 2/3 people at this moment in Taiwan never surf the Internet at all.

When will the mobile Internet become an important application besides making phone calls for you handset? For me, such requirement is not in sight at least for now. Even in the 3G time, making phone calls is still the primary function of all handsets.

I asked many consumers in interviews what their expectations for the mobile Internet are. When it came to WAP, many people said that, lack of a rich supply of interesting contents, WAP was of little attraction to them. What's surprising was that we, as a mobile operator, provided over 100 types of content on WAP, how could they come to the conclusion that there were not enough contents?

The key lies in the fact that consumers can not find the contents they need. If there are only 30 types of content available and two are truly needed, consumers would think there's a sufficient supply of contents. Yet on the other hand, if there're over 100 types of content yet none is truly needed, they would think there's not enough content.

The problem is we have done virtually everything. We have established a WAP portal, grafted everything from the Internet, from news to fortune-telling to image and ringtone download. We have also referenced the i-Mode experience of Japan. There could not be possibly anything missed. But consumers are still not satisfied.

The reason is very simple: there's not a killer application for the content of the mobile Internet. In other words, there's no content really necessary for consumers The mobile Internet itself is not a killer application either and no thrilling application is expected in the future!

If we ask what the biggest killer application of the Internet is, a very interesting answer is, with the high-speed development in the past five years, the biggest killer application turns out to be the communication service or, more specifically, the email service, which has nothing to do with the content!

Communication is one of the basic needs of human beings. Its key identity is the interaction between people. The mobile Internet, on the other hand, is the interaction between people and machines. The mobile Internet is not so essential if the handset-based Internet could be easily replaced by a PC. It will remain so unless there's something that cannot be done with a PC, but with a handset (e.g., downloading an image or ringtone to a handset).

In countries with extremely low penetration rate of computer, for example, in Japan, the mobile Internet could get popular. Many Japanese do not have a computer at home, but they have their personal email addresses, as they use handsets to access the Internet. I am increasingly sure that the success of the mobile Internet in Japan has to do with its unique environment and cultures there.

The largest application of 3G will remain to be the communication service. But if you think that means receiving and sending emails through handsets, you are wrong again. In the next article, I will talk about the messaging service of handsets: SMS, email and MMS. (
2003/03/16 - By Digitalwall.com - Way to
China Internet/Telecom )