Click and Park: The Future of the Parking IndustryWritten by Madanmohan Rao
Automobile-dense markets are perfect targets for Web and wireless enabled payment services for parking, which allow for advanced fee collection, decreased operational costs, fewer on-site employees, increased security, predictive parking services and co-branded promotional plans for customers. For instance, county government of Burlingame, California, wirelessly regulates its parking meters to stop meter theft and monitor coin deposits. The parking industry itself is estimated at over $500 billion; US accounts for over 105 million parking spaces. Half-way across world, Singaporeans today can use their mobile phones to pay for parking, taxi fares and photo prints. In Suntec City shopping area, drivers can pay parking tickets via cellphones after having procured a designated PIN (Personal Information Number) with a local services agent. M-solutions providers like Netgalactic (www.netgalactic.com) expect major takeoff in Web and wireless enabled parking solutions for markets ranging from US to Asia-Pacific. In Australia, companies like Telstra are also targeting services which will collapse multiple credit card features into one single cellphone. In Melbourne and Sydney, mobile phone-equipped parking meters are widespread (thanks to features like meter expiry alerts via SMS), and sales at phone-equipped soft-drink machines are reportedly 10 per cent higher than at conventional machines. Leveraging Web and handheld devices for parking offers numerous advantages for drivers: avoiding need to fumble for change, locate attendant booths in labyrinthine parking lots, waste time queuing up at booths, or deal with uncertainty and inconvenience of not having guaranteed parking spots. Services offered through such a system would fall into three categories: pre-parking services (eg. viewing, booking, promotion of related commercial goods and services), active services (eg. expiry alerts), and post-parking services (eg. aggregated billing, coupons, co-promotion of other services).
| | Wireless Web: What's the Impact on Your E-Business?Written by Madanmohan Rao
All phones are created equal, but some are more equal than others. From Canada and California to Japan and Korea, Internet-enabled mobile phones are rapidly ushering in next generation of online commerce: "m-commerce" or Mobile-commerce. "The wireless world is a parallel universe almost as large as Net -- and two are beginning a fascinating convergence,. are according to Swapnil Shah, Director of international operations at Inktomi. Three sets of devices are Emerging as wireless Internet platforms: cell phones, PDAs (personal digital assistants like Palm Pilot) other dedicated devices (such as digital cameras and Walkman radios). Mobile e-commerce services -- "me-services" -- have slightly different attributes than Internet services we think of today, says Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. They must enable customers to conduct "burst transactions" -- that is, short-session, information-driven transactions that can be completed very quickly, while people are on go and in motion. Market Forecasts According to market forecasts from Jupiter, Forrester and IDC, between 50 to 70 per cent of Internet users worldwide will be accessing Net via mobile devices in year 2003; number of Internet- enabled devices then would range from 150 to 350 million units. Ads in form of text links, micro banners and audio jingles on WMI (wireless mobile Internet) networks are expected to cross $1 billion mark within two years. Reports from Ericsson suggest that sale of mobile phones worldwide will in a few years exceed PC market by four times. 50 per cent of Europeans are expected to have mobiles by year 2003. And by 2002, third-generation networks known as UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) will offer richer online experiences. Companies have been toying around idea of a wireless Internet for quite some time, but wireless revolution, as we know it today started to really pick up steam in 1997. Disparate standards movements and "microbrowser" Companies like Phone.com collectively mobilized implementations, who, along with Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson, formed WAP (Wireless Access Protocol, sometimes jokingly referred to as "Why Another Protocol?") Forum to develop an independent standard for wireless Internet, based on WML (Wireless Markup Language). Around same time, NTT DoComo in Japan released a similar technology based on compact HTML called i-Mode. The last several years has seen a rapid proliferation of wireless content, mostly throughout Europe and Asia, but also in U.S. and Latin America. The numbers for WAP, however, are not as thrilling, mainly due to fact that application developers need to redesign their content using WML. In pre-WAP era, SMS (Simple Messaging Service) clearly was most popular trend by enabling two-way messaging and mobile e-mail. SMS text messages now represent about 8 percent of total mobile revenues in Europe (Approximately $10 billion) and that figure is growing exponentially. But it is 2000 and 2001, which will belong to mobile Internet, according to infotech services company Infosys, whose offerings now include wireless content solutions. Europe with its focus on standards has achieved 100% ubiquity with adoption of GSM, whereas North America has traded innovation and diversity for ubiquity with a slew of cellular technologies like AMPS, TDMA, CDMA, GSM, IDEN, thus making it slower for mobile Internet services to take off. In most markets, much WMI usage is among trendy teenagers, but it will become more and more "professional" and mainstream, predicted Bertrand Bidaud, telecom research analyst at global research firm Gartner Group, in an interview for this publication. "M-Commerce will eventually overtake traditional PC-based B2C commerce," predicts Infosys wireless consultant Shashi Vempathi. The cellular phone will fast transform from a voice device to be key enabler of secure mobile commerce in 21st century, and by its mobile nature it will become instrument for conducting every day sundry transactions -- something that is difficult for PC-based B2C e-commerce to achieve, he says. Market Potential and User Behaviour Applications well suited for WMI domain include B2B services (mobile Intranet access, roaming email services), travel information (for buses and Airlines), finance (time-critical banking and stock trades), e- commerce (betting, auctions), and community (chat, e-postcards, cartoons), according to Johan Montelius, wireless Internet specialist at New York-based research firm Jupiter Communications. A recent study that Hewlett-Packard conducted on mobile markets found that first generation of "me- services" falls into six categories: Transactions (banking and travel reservations) information (sports Scores, real-time news), Database search (yellow pages and translation services), Entertainment (customer ringers, games), Personal services (calendars, address books), Communications (Group SMS, mail). M-commerce is great for time-sensitive and location-sensitive sales. M-commerce can easily spur impulse buying for items like music -- consumers can buy an album almost as soon as they hear it on radio or see video on MTV. News and information services have been among first to jump in to exploit possibilities of WMI, and dozens of news feeds are now accessible via mobiles. Phone.com has already rolled out book and music ordering via WAP for Amazon in U.S. and U.K. In corporate environment, banking and airline sectors are early adopters. But for a long time to come, "killer app" of WMI will still be Old-fashioned messaging and related services, says Gartner's Bidaud. "B2B will come later. It appears at a more mature stage, as in wired world. First will be B2C and then corporate application (Intranet)," he observes. WMI in Action In Japan, one of most profitable WMI sites is Bandai, which "uploads" new cartoons everyday on phone. Tone rings download is also very popular. A large proportion of stock trading in South Korea has shifted to Net and mobile phones. U.S.-based Inktomi is offering "shopping dial tone" solutions via WAP directory and catalog services for cell phone users, so that online commerce is accessible irrespective of platform used. Inktomi is working with hundreds of merchants to offer sales of millions of products via WAP; merchants use a branded interface, while Inktomi will handle billing, data center, and shopping basket operations. Yahoo's sites in many countries offer instant access to mail, finance, news, WAP directories, and
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