Gearing Up for Wireless RevolutionWritten by Richard Hsu
Wireless Internet is booming and we are heading toward an information-everywhere society. Already, it is hot in Europe. U.S. is now catching up at very rapid rate. Worldwide cell phones sales already outpace personal computer purchase. Boston-based Yankee groups says there could be 50 million wireless Internet users by 2004. It projects that by 2002, there will be 860 million wireless subscribers worldwide. International Data Corp, of Framingham, MA, reports that by that same year, 70 percent of wireless s phone users will access data application via their phones. More encouragingly, many companies in U.S., according to a recent survey, will pay for wireless Internet service for their mobile professionals which will results in increased use for wireless Web from 3% to 78% in next 12 moths. By end of 2000, all new cellular phones will be equipped with wireless Web features known as Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). The revolution brought by wireless Internet will change how people shop. For instance, one may order a book right on spot after talking to a friend while waiting for a doctor appoint. With tens of millions of people expected to own Internet phone in a few years, many online companies see an opportunity to push wireless commerce as an extension of their Internet businesses, thus providing mobile phone users ability to make their purchase anywhere and any time. Several major Internet portal such as Yahoo! Excite , MSN have announced and launched its mobile Internet service since last year. Even Oracle launched a mobile Internet service after its five-year preparation. These services will be appearing personalized for mobile use in banking, shopping, news, travel information and other specific tasks (buying and selling of stocks).
| | Electronic Disconnects! – Which way are YOU leaning?Written by Ib Hagsten, Ph.D., CAC, Dpl. ACAN
“Every second, worldwide, a PC (personal computer) is connected for first time, and every half second a cellular telephone is activated,” Frank Feather, futurist from Canada. Contrast such dramatic electronic explosion with comment from a business exceutive a few weeks ago, “You don’t have to be there” (on web via computer). We are at a cross-roads between “the way we do it” and new web-evolution. This new “webolution” will trigger a greater 30- to 50-year change than Industrial Revolution. Most people then (Industrial Revolution) did not understand what was happening around them and to them – neither will many understand what is already happening via web. Do we want to stick our head in sand about changes that are affecting our clients and us? Or will we become informed about changes? (regardless of how little we personally feel like participating). Alexander Graham Bell discovered telephone. 4,000 phone companies started, yet most did not survive. The recent “high mortality rate” among dot.com companies just proves that history has a way of repeating itself. A new computer being connected every second, somewhere in world, and a new cell phone every half second is not “stuff out of “ Star Wars” or Popular Mechanics – it is what is happening, right now. Today half world’s population has never made a phone call; yet it is highly probable that they will all have cell phones and computers within one generation.
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