Wap: Transitional Technology for M-Commerce

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Wap: Transitional Technology for M-CommerceMahesh S. Raisinghani aa Nghani is the director of research at the Center for Applied Information Technology and afaculty member of the E-Commerce and Information Systems Department at the Universityof Dallas Graduate School of Management. He may be reached at [email protected] online: 21 Dec 2006.

To cite this article: Mahesh S. Raisinghani (2001) Wap: Transitional Technology for M-Commerce, Information SystemsManagement, 18:3, 8-16, DOI: 10.1201/1078/43196.18.3.20010601/31285.2

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HE INTERNATIONAL DATA CORPORA-tion promises 1 billion cellular tele-phones worldwide by 2004, with halfof them Internet-enabled. The most

popular Internet-enabling technology beingadopted en masse by handset manufacturersand service providers is wireless applicationprotocol (WAP). This article attempts todescribe the fast-growing trend for tools toaccess the Internet that will be more popularin the future than the predominant use of personal computers is at present. It alsodepicts the importance of WAP in the field of E-commerce, with its popularity lead-ing E-commerce into mobile commerce (M-commerce). Because it works in alreadyexisting networks, WAP needs little modifica-tion in Web content and can be available withease. Already, there are numerous companiesproviding E-commerce services through WAParound the world, and with the huge mobiletelephone subscriber base, the potential for M-commerce is tremendous.

INTRODUCTIONTrade developed through many stages, frombarter in the old days to E-commerce today.What will be the tool for transactions tomor-row? In the past half decade, the Internet hasrevolutionized the practice and procedure oftrade, giving birth to the new world of E-commerce. Now people can buy or sellgoods and services practically 24 hours aday, 7 days a week, if they have access to theWeb. Vendors have been able to tap intomarkets that were impossible to reach due toremote geographic location or other reasons.It is this “anywhere, anytime” technology thathas fueled the new economy.

Although much has been accomplishedtoward this goal of being able to trade any-where, anytime, personal computer laptopsare too bulky for M-commerce. The obviouschoice is empowering the mobile telephoneto be the choice tool for M-commerce. The M-commerce phenomenon is centered in Asiaand Europe (not the United States), where

WAP AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

MAHESH S.RAISINGHANI is thedirector of research atthe Center for AppliedInformationTechnology and afaculty member of theE-Commerce andInformation SystemsDepartment at theUniversity of DallasGraduate School ofManagement. He maybe reached [email protected].

T

WAP: TRANSITIONALTECHNOLOGY FORM-COMMERCE

Mahesh S. Raisinghani

Wireless application protocol (WAP) is the most popular Internet-enabling technologybeing adopted en masse by handset manufacturers and service providers alike. Thisarticle discusses the fast-growing trend for WAP tools to access the Internet versusthe current predominant use of personal computers. The article also describes theimportance of WAP in the fields of E-commerce and M-commerce.

I N F O R M A T I O N S Y S T E M S M A N A G E M E N T

S U M M E R 2 0 0 18

There is a more honest attitude now. There will be a Darwinian selection process,and the end of opportunism.

— Enrique Carrier, Director of Prince & Cooke, Argentina, speaking about the future of dot.coms

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9I N F O R M A T I O N S Y S T E M S M A N A G E M E N T

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mobile telephony is further advanced and PCusage is much lower. Nokia, Ericsson,Motorola, and NTT DoCoMo, to name a few— as well as giants in banking, retail, andtravel — are developing their mobile E-sites,including Amazon and Schwab; and all aresettling on WAP. WAP works with all majorwireless networks — Code Division MultipleAccess (CDMA); Global System for MobileCommuni-cations (GSM), Time DivisionMultiple Access (TDMA), and Cellular DigitalPacket Data (CDPD) — via circuit switched,packet, or short messaging service and can bebuilt into any operating system, includingWindows CE, Palm OS, Epoc, or JavaOS. TheJapanese mobile operator DoCoMo is theleader, with the first mover advantage inbringing mobile Internet services to market byattracting 10 million subscribers to its iModeservice in less than one year. The Palm VIIpersonal digital assistant (PDA) from 3COMcan deliver wireless e-mail and informationaccess service in the U.S. and the U.K. Mostcurrent mobile Internet services are based onthe WAP standard. Microsoft, who came a bitlate to the game, gave its grudging approvalrecently by redoing its cellular telephonebrowser for WAP.1,2

Analysts say such personalized serviceswill be the meat of M-commerce. According toGartner’s research vice president, PhillipRedman, “The personalization of content andservices that help consumers make their pur-chasing decisions” will be pivotal. Informationis key to the overall success of M-commerce,and Cellmania and BroadVision are two wire-less applications based on that premise.Cellmania’s mEnterprise is intended to helpcompanies bolster customer relations in partby increasing the productivity of travelingemployees. mEnterprise integrates with acompany’s infrastructure and powers field-ser-vice and sales-force automation applicationsand mobile portals. BroadVision is offeringBroadVision Mobile Solution to help business-es get a better line on the content customerswant pushed to hand-held devices by captur-ing customer data. It also can create homepages that site visitors can customize to theirneeds.

WILL WAP-ENABLED PHONESDOMINATE/REPLACE THE PERSONALCOMPUTER MARKETPLACE?Everyday there is some news about WAP-enabled phones and their growing use towardthe Internet. Is this growth going to sustain or

even surpass people’s expectation to becomethe most important medium for communica-tion and commerce? Will it lead the staticwired E-commerce to wireless M-commerce?Although the only Internet-enabling technolo-gy being adopted en masse by handset manu-facturers and service providers is WAP, thereare other options, such as J2ME (Java 2 MicroEdition); or a mobile ASP (application serviceprovider); or a Citrix terminal solution; or anOracleMobile solution, which totally ignorecellular telephones and promise to satisfy allof your mobile Internet business needs over apager. In addition, there are issues with WAP’sWireless Markup Language (WML) which can-not be read on an HTML browser and viceversa. Is Sun’s J2ME, which allows a smallapplication to be on the telephone so it can beused even when disconnected, a good solu-tion; or is it, as reported by Internet servicevendors (ISVs), too small and does it lack toomany of the Java standard edition componentsneeded to create useable applications? InSun’s defense, Motorola displayed applicationssuch as expense reports, e-mail, and calendar-ing on an Motorola iDEN cellular telephonerunning J2ME.3

In the business-to-business (B2B) environ-ment, real-time mobile access to onlineexchanges/virtual communities/auctions canbe facilitated by M-commerce. Mobile workerssuch as sales reps, truck drivers, and servicepersonnel will be able to use the mobileInternet. Medical doctors will be able to usetheir hand-held PDAs to pull up patient infor-mation, information on available drugs andonline ordering/scheduling of prescriptions,clinical tests, and other procedures. Unifiedmessaging services will allow mobile workersto use a single device for all their communica-tions and interactions; and ubiquitous com-puting will use online connections tocommunicate exception reports, performanceproblems, and errors to service personnel.2

Most IT executives are still on the fence,whereas a few early adopters have settled onproprietary technologies. One example is awomen’s accessory company, NineWest,which has a non-WAP client/server solutionfor its field reps and buyers deployed intoolder Nokia 9000 cellular telephones.Developed by the Finnish company Celesta, itcreates smart forms using Short MessageService (SMS) rather than going through anISP. This solution has reportedly been prof-itable for NineWest because it alerts headquar-ters in real time, rather than through weekly


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batch files, when a store carrying its line needsto be restocked.

Similarly, NeoPoint of La Jolla, California, adeveloper of Web telephones, has created awireless service called myAladdin.com that,among other abilities, can monitor informationsuch as airline flights or stock performanceand alert a user when a flight is delayed or astock price drops. InfoMove of Kirkland,Washington, integrates the Global PositioningSystem (GPS) and text-to-speech technologiesto create a private-label information servicethat has been sold to DaimlerChrysler andPaccar, a heavy truck manufacturer. Tekelecmakes equipment for wired and wirelesstelecommunications suppliers to enable themto offer value-added services to their cus-tomers. Since the FCC requires that if youswitch or move, your telephone companymust let you keep your old telephone market,Tekelec’s local number portability (LDP) soft-ware is the best on the market and with itsreseller networks such as Lucent and Tellabs,Tekelec is a strong takeover candidate.

WAP: A GLOBAL STANDARDWAP is a format for displaying Web and otherdata on the small screens of hand-helddevices, specifically, cellular telephones. WAPis a set of specifications, developed by theWAP Forum, that lets developers using WMLbuild networked applications designed forhand-held wireless devices. WAP is a standard,similar to the Internet language HTML, whichtranslates the web site into a format that canbe read on the mobile’s screen. The data isbroadcast by the telephone’s network suppli-er. WAP v1.1 constitutes the first global trans-parent de facto standard to be embraced bywell over 75 percent of all relevant industry

segments. WAP’s key elements include (1) theWAP programming model, (2) wireless mark-up language and WML Script, (3) a micro-browser specification, (4) wireless telephonyapplication, and (5) the WAP stack.4 WAP isdesigned to work with most wireless protocolssuch as CDPD, CDMA, GSM, PDC, PHS,TDMA, FLEX, ReFLEX, iDEN, TETRA, DECT,DataTAC, and Mobitex.

Operating System for WAPWAP is a communications protocol and anapplication environment. It can be built onany operating system including PalmOS,EPOC, Windows CE, FLEXOS, OS/9, andJavaOS. WAP provides service interoperabilityeven between different device families. WAPuses existing Internet standards, and the WAParchitecture (illustrated in Exhibit 1) wasdesigned to enable standard off-the-shelfInternet servers to provide services to wirelessdevices.

In addition to wireless devices, WAP usesmany Internet additions when communicatingstandards such as XML, UDP, and IP. WAPwireless protocols are based on Internet stan-dards such as HTTP and Transport LayerSecurity (TLS), but have been optimized forthe unique constraints of the wireless environ-ment. Internet standards such as HTML, HTTP,TLS, and TCP are inefficient over mobile net-works, requiring large amounts of mainly text-based data to be sent. Standard HTML Webcontent generally cannot be displayed in aneffective way on the small size screens ofpocket-sized mobile telephones and pagers,and navigation around and between screens isnot easy in one-handed mode. HTTP and TCPare not optimized for the intermittent cover-age, long latencies, and limited bandwidthassociated with wireless networks. HTTPsends its headers and commands in an ineffi-cient text format instead of compressed bina-ry. Wireless services using these protocols areoften slow, costly, and difficult to use. The TLSsecurity standard requires many messages tobe exchanged between client and serverwhich, with wireless transmission latencies,results in a very slow response for the user.WAP has been optimized to solve all theseproblems, utilizing binary transmission forgreater compression of data, and is optimizedfor long latency and low to medium band-width. WAP sessions cope with intermittentcoverage and can operate over a wide varietyof wireless transports using IP where it is pos-


WTA ServerWAP Proxy

Filter

Web Server

Filter

WAP Proxy

HTMLWirelessNetwork

WML

WML

WML

WML

WML

EXHIBIT 1 WAP Architecture Dow

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sible and other optimized protocols where IPis impossible. The WML used for WAP contentmakes optimum use of small screens andallows easy navigation with one hand withouta full keyboard and has built-in scalabilityfrom two-line text displays through to the fullgraphic screens on smart telephones and com-municators.5 Exhibit 2 illustrates the relation-ship between WAP and the Web.

WAP ForumThe WAP Forum is the industry associationcomprised of more than 200 members that hasdeveloped the de facto world standard forwireless information and telephony serviceson digital mobile telephones and other wire-less terminals. The primary goal of the WAPForum is to bring together companies from allsegments of the wireless industry value chainto ensure product interoperability and growthof the wireless market. WAP Forum membersrepresent over 95 percent of the global hand-set market carriers, with more than 100 millionsubscribers, leading infrastructure providers,software developers, and other organizationsproviding solutions to the wireless industry(http://www.wapforum.org/).

ARGUMENTS FOR WAPWAP is efficient at coping with the limitedbandwidth and connection-oriented nature oftoday’s wireless networks due to its stripped-down protocol stack.2 WAP works with allmajor wireless networks and can be built intoany operating system, including Windows CE,PalmOS, Epoc, or JavaOS. WAP applicationsare available over second-generation GlobalSystem for Mobile (GSM) networks albeit only

at 14.4 kilobits per second (kbps). WAP ser-vices, however, also work on other platforms,including 2.5 G (data-enhanced second-gener-ation) networks offering up to 128 kbps begin-ning in 2001. WAP low data rate services,already available in many European nationalmarkets, include short messaging service (SMS)wireless e-mail, which can interconnect withthe Internet. New products and services thatuse the WAP format provide instant access topersonal financial data, flight schedules, newsand weather reports, and countless shoppingopportunities. Finally, WAP gateway’s flexibili-ty enables operators to introduce and bill fornew services easily without having to makechanges to their existing billing systems.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST WAPAlthough WAP has drawn a tremendousamount of attention in the business and tech-nology sector, its huge popularity has alsodrawn criticism that leads one to think thatWAP will not develop into a major forceimpacting business and life. According toDavid Rensin, CTO at Aether Systems, a hand-held infrastructure developer in Owings Mills,Maryland, “WAP is dead.” Chief among hiscomplaints was the necessity for rewriting theWeb sites in WML for every device a WAP-enabled Web site is sent to. WML is used as atechnique to get content from an HTML Website using WAP onto small-screen devices.“You have to rewrite the same Web site for afour-line cell phone display and again for aneight-line display,” and “the problem [withWAP] is content. Redoing a Web page for mul-tiple sites on different devices is a nightmare,”according to Rensin.1


EXHIBIT 2 WAP and the Web

ApplicationServer

WebServer

DesktopPC WAP

Server

DatabaseSMS or

Data Call

Corporate NetworkOperatorNetwork

MobilePhone

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Hand-held devices are more limited thandesktop computers in several important ways.Their screens are small, able to display only afew lines of text, and they are often mono-chrome instead of color. Their input capabili-ties are limited to a few buttons or numbers,and entering data takes extra time. They haveless processing power and memory to workwith, their wireless network connections haveless bandwidth, and they are slower thanthose of computers hard-wired to fast LANs.6

Web applications are traditionally designedbased on the assumption that visitors will havea desktop computer with a large screen and amouse. A smart telephone can’t display a largecolor graphic and doesn’t have point-and-clicknavigation capabilities. As some analysts say,these limitations will hinder WAP as the choicefor tomorrow’s technology.

Are Mobile Telephones Hazardous toHealth?All mobile telephones and wireless LANdevices emit microwave radiation at the samefrequencies used to cook food. Now scientistsare trying to determine whether end-users areat risk. “We have evidence of possible geneticdamage,” says Dr. George Carlo, chairman of Wireless Technology Research LLC(Washington, D.C.), which has been conduct-ing research into cellular telephones for 6years. His study found that “using mobilephones triples the risk of brain cancer.”7 Dr.Kjell Hansson Mild in Sweden studied radia-tion risk in 11,000 mobile telephone users.Symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, andburning sensations on the skin were morecommon among those who made longermobile telephone calls. At the same time,there are a growing number of unconfirmedreports of individuals whose health has beenaffected after chronic, frequent use of mobiletelephones, presumably from radiation effectson cells. There is no evidence so far of mobilephone radiation causing tumor formation ormemory impairment in humans. Much moreresearch is needed before any firm conclu-sions can be drawn. Whatever the effects ofusing mobile telephones may be in humans,the health risk to an individual user from elec-tromagnetic radiation is likely to be very smallindeed, but some individuals may be moreprone to radiation side effects than others(http://www.globalchange.com/radiation.htm).

Poor Security?Furnishing full protection in a wireless worldinvolves three types of code: (1) encryptionalgorithms to scramble data, (2) digital certifi-cates to restrict access, and (3) antivirus soft-ware. Encryption, the most demanding of thethree, follows a fairly simple equation: thelarger the algorithm, the stronger the security,and the more CPU cycles needed. WAP-enabled telephones do not have the horse-power to handle the bulky security softwaredesigned for PCs. At this point, all hand-helddevices, including PDAs, are vulnerable to anyvirus that comes along. It’s worth noting thatthere are currently no known viruses thatattack wireless gear, but as mobile IP gainspopularity, it will become an increasinglyattractive target. “It’s conceivable one couldhave a worm virus similar to Explore.zip thatcould spread to every person’s device in amatter of a few seconds,” says Nachenberg.7

WAP AND M-COMMERCEThe average mobile telephone is essential-

ly a dumb device: good for allowing people tochat, but hopeless when it comes to managingthe information that makes people’s lives goround. For the past few years, the wirelessindustry has been engaged in a gargantuaneffort to change this. The idea is to create asingle smart gadget that will allow people tocheck their e-mail, consult the Internet, plantheir schedule, and, of course, make tele-phone calls: in other words, a combination ofan electronic organizer, a personal computer,and a mobile telephone.

Towards M-commerce applications, Soneraof Finland, which has implemented an ApionWAP gateway, is the world’s first telecomoperator to launch WAP services (2Q/99). Inaddition to providing its own services, thetelco/cellco is actively and rapidly creatingpartnerships with companies such as Finnair,CNN Interactive, Yellow Pages, Tieto Corp-oration, and Pohjola.4

Recently (as of April 2000), a company inCalifornia called Everypath started to deliver anew era of freedom in mobility and conve-nience in which one will be able to shop, pur-chase gift certificates, bid on auctions, tradestocks, play games, pay bills, bid on finewines, get driving directions, check the calen-dar, reserve a hotel room, track home prices,plan a vacation, stay in touch, or order ticketsfrom the palm of the hand or with the soundof the voice, no matter where one is.



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ebapplicationsare tradition-ally designedbased on theassumptionthat visitorswill have adesktopcomputerwith a largescreen and amouse.

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In Japan, NTT DoCoMo has sold more than1 million of its Internet-based i-mode tele-phones in the six months since they werelaunched and received remarkably few com-plaints. The rest of the world’s producers aregetting ready for a surge in demand as theyrelease their products over the next fewmonths.

Internet content-providers are already tai-loring their products for telephone users: get-ting rid of power-hungry pictures, forexample, and distilling long-winded news sto-ries into the bald facts. Nokia has an alliancewith America’s CNN to provide news that hasbeen specifically designed for telephones.NTT DoCoMo reports that there are alreadymore than 1000 companies providing Webpages for its telephones.8

CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR M-COMMERCEThe critical success factors for M-commerceare speed, billing, and security. Each of thesefactors will be discussed.

SpeedToday, most digital cellular users are limited tocircuit-switched data at about 9.6 kbps, suffi-cient for text based messaging and limited filetransfer. This is where desktop Internet userswere in 1994, when there were just 4 millionhost computers on-net compared with morethan 60 million Internet hosts worldwide inOctober 1999. The next move in the circuit-switched world is high-speed circuit switcheddata (HSCSD) running at 57.6 kbps. This issufficient for fully functional Web browsing.However, as underlined by analysts such asGartner Group’s Dataquest, HSCSD is an earlyadopter scenario that gives operators a com-petitive edge with corporations. Essentially, itis profiled for bulky data transfers.

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), con-versely, is quick and agile. As a packet-switched bearer, it promises “always-on”service at up to 115 kbps (for practical pur-poses). At the same time, it sits comfortably onthe migration path to Enhanced Data for GSMevolution (EDGE), running at up to 384 kbps.So although speed may be a concern for WAPsurfers now, technology will enhance that inthe very near future.4

BillingThe WAP gateway has been profiled to gatherextensive billing detail for each transaction, for

example, the download of content (both vol-ume and time), universal resource locators(URLs) visited, and other typical events duringa WAP session. This information is stored in ageneric, flexible format in a billing log. This, inturn, interfaces to a mediation platform whichtranslates it into valid call detail records(CDRs) and passes them to the billing agencyor credit card company’s billing system. Thebilling could be (1) transaction-based billingwhere the services are paid according to ser-vice usage with different prices possible fordifferent services, (2) subscription based witha monthly fee, (3) flat rate with one price forall, (4) free where the content provider maypay for the airtime to the operator, or (5) acombination of the above four billing options.The billing log receives “billable events” fromthe event manager. The gateway’s billing datainterface requires only minor tuning to adjustits data formatting for different billing systems.In short, the WAP gateway’s flexibility enablesoperators to introduce and bill for new ser-vices easily without having to make changesto their existing billing systems. However, ser-vice roaming is difficult if transaction-basedbilling is used. The Holy Grail is turning thehand-held device into a payment device or theequivalent of an electronic wallet. As we movetoward the third-generation (3G) mobile stan-dard, also known as Universal MobileTelecommunications System (UMTS), anInternational Telecommunication Union (ITU)standard for voice, video, and Internet serviceslicensed in Europe in 2000 and to be deployedin 2002, airtime will be packet-based with anemphasis on content; and billing possibilitiesare (1) monthly fee (similar to the Internetmodel), (2) amount of data or time-based, (3)commercials, (4) service transactions, (5) or acombination of the above options. Billing is avery market-sensitive problem and one solu-tion is not possible. Without a doubt, thebiggest change will be more choices and inthe end, markets will decide between free ver-sus price for M-commerce.

SecuritySecurity is optional in the WAP standard, but isdearly mandatory for E-commerce providersand users. It may be implemented initially atthe wireless transport layer security (WTLS)level of the WAP stack. This is the wireless ver-sion of industry standard transport layer secu-rity (TLS), equivalent to the widely deployedsecure sockets layer (SSL) 3.1. As a recent


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Baltimore Technologies white paper notes, itprovides a secure network connection sessionbetween a client and a server and it most com-monly appears between a Web browser (inWAP’s case, the handset microbrowser) and aWeb server, which can be an existing Internetserver that is also WAP-enabled.

Full participation in E-commerce requiresthat the additional security elements of veri-fied authentication, authorization, and nonre-pudiation be addressed. In real terms, thisimplies integration with public key infrastruc-ture (PKI) systems that are already deployedand with new systems in the future. In thewireless arena, these systems will be definedin WAP.4 Recently citing the growth in usage ofwireless devices, Richard Yanowitch, VeriSignVice President of Worldwide Marketing, saidthat his company plans to provide “a completetrust infrastructure to the wireless world.” Keyto the plan is an arrangement wherebyMotorola will include the Verisign technologyin the browsers that run on Motorola mobiletelephones. Other companies endorsingVerisign’s plan include RSA Security,BellSouth, Sonera SmartTrust, and Research InMotion. These companies will leverage thetechnologies in their own products and ser-vices. For instance, technologies and servicesavailable from VeriSign include:

❑ Microclient Wireless Personal Trust Agentcode for embedding in hand-held devices —code designed to enable seamless use ofprivate keys, digital certificates, and digitalsignatures available to device manufacturersnow

❑ Short-lived wireless server certificates —“mini-digital certificates,” according to offi-cials, that are optimized for authentication ofwireless devices and services

❑ A gateway-assisted secure sockets layer (SSL)trust model — to enable network serviceproviders to substitute wireless certificatesfor SSL certificates

❑ A gateway-assisted public key infrastructureroaming model — to enable small-footprintdevices to digitally sign transactions

❑ Subscriber Trust Services — for secure mes-saging and transactions using wireless hand-held devices

❑ Server/Gateway Trust Services — designedto allow electronic-businesses operatingwireless servers and gateways to deliversecure applications

❏ Developer Trust Services — for digitally pro-tecting downloadable content

❑ Enterprise Trust Services — for wireless,B2B, and B2C applications such as banking,brokerage, health care, and messaging

❑ Service provider platforms — for networkoperators and application service providersto offer VeriSign wireless trust services

Transaction services to be offered includeWireless Validation Services, for real-time certifi-cate validation, and Wireless Payment Services,to enable wireless payment applications.9

FUTURE IMPACT: GENERATION “W” IN AWIRELESS WORLDA new study by International DataCorporation predicts that the number of wire-less Internet subscribers will jump from 5 mil-lion in 2000 to nearly 300 million in just 3years. That would account for more than halfof all Internet users worldwide. WAP’s impacton mobile data would be similar to whatNetscape’s impact was for the Internet: to pro-vide an attractive and notionally transparentportal to the cyber world, which had morethan 200 million users in September 1999, inaddition to thousands of corporate intranets.For E-commerce providers, that portal pro-vides a potential user base of more than 400million mobile subscribers worldwide becausethe Internet is ultimately about E-commerce.Even though it includes a vast range of so-called “free” services — e-mail, social net-works, consumer networks, a range ofeducational tools, computer games, and more— it is all about global economic activity andproductivity. For the vast majority of fixednetwork Internet users, E-commerce is stillessentially only 1 to 3 years old. Amazon.comwas not a household word in 1996. Internetbanking, brokering, and financial serviceswere not yet deployed into the mass market.

Yet this E-commerce world of B2B, retailbanking, brokering, insurance, financial ser-vices, and purchase of almost any good or ser-vice is commonplace. There is no reason whythe Internet space should not be embraced bymobile users in the same manner, subject tosome differences in their marketing profile.4

Salespeople, for example, are providedthrough a wireless database access the infor-mation needed to close a deal on the spot.Prices and delivery dates can be checked,orders can be entered, and even payments canbe made without stepping outside the cus-tomer’s office. That boosts the hit ratio, elimi-nates paperwork (and low-level administrative


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positions), improves customer service, andspeeds cash flow.

Similar to the Internet revolution, thismobile makeover will change forever the waycompanies do business. Out of the office willno longer mean out of touch. In fact, remoteemployees may make wireless a way of life,so they do not have to dial in for e-mail andother information. Companies will be able toreinvent business processes, extending themdirectly to the persons in the field who dealdirectly with customers. Ultimately, companiesand carriers could deploy wireless LANs tohotels and other public places, creating hotspots of high-speed connectivity for M-com-merce. In the future, the ideal mobile devicewill be a single product suited for standardnetwork access and services to handle tasksthat extend the use of the device beyond itshardware-based limitations.

A U.K.-based consultancy’s analyst predictsthat 70 percent of current cellular users indeveloped countries may be using advanceddata services by 2005, with the value of thecellular data market overall set to reach $80billion, from a very low base in 1999. Thetakeoff of cellular data is attracting a host ofnew players to the mobile communicationsmarket, including Internet-based companiessuch as Netscape, Amazon, Excite, Microsoft,IBM, and Cisco. Media companies such asCNN, Reuters, and ITN are examples of early-bird providers.4

As for the United States, it has beenalready predicted that the number of peopleusing cellular telephones for wireless data willskyrocket from 3 percent of the U.S. onlinepopulation to 78 percent over the 12 monthsfrom January through December 2001. Themain reason for the increase is that employersare starting to pay for these services, accord-ing to a survey released by New York-basedCap Gemini America and Corechange, Inc., awireless portal provider based in Boston.Currently, 33 percent of the U.S. online popu-lation uses cellular phones for business pur-poses. Of that 33 percent, 11 percent (or 3percent of the total online population) usesthem for data applications such as e-mail andnews, the companies say. By the end of 2001,78 percent of the U.S. online population willbe using cellular telephones for data.According to this survey of 1000 U.S. Internetusers, which was conducted by GreenfieldOnline, Inc. on behalf of Cap Gemini, 47 per-cent of those who will begin using cellulartelephones to access data in the year 2001 said

they would do so because someone else,mainly their employer, would begin paying forit. “This was the most important reason foradoption of the new technology,” said DavidRidemar, head of Cap Gemini America’s E-Business Unit. Of those who will start access-ing data with their cell phones in 2001, 52percent said they will use the functionality fora mix of e-mail, personal data, and businessinformation, 24 percent will use it for e-mailand personal data, and, 13 percent will use itfor e-mail only.10

Jupiter Communications forecasts a jumpin consumer-to-consumer auctions from $3billion in 1999 sales to $15 billion in 2004.These numbers are significant because auc-tions are a natural match for wirelessproviders for the following reasons:

❑ Wireless auctions require much less band-width and data than a typical E-commerceWeb site.

❑ The time-sensitivity of auctions makes itmuch easier to access over WAP-enabledphones or personal digital assistants (PDAs)like Palm VII (compatible with eBay) orResearch in Motion’s 957 wireless hand-heldcompatible with Bid.com (release due inFall 2000).

Indeed, it is suggested by some analysts thatcellular subscriber numbers will top 1 billionby 2004, a substantial number of them WAP-enabled. Clearly giving mobile users the samemobile data connectivity that fixed networkInternet users enjoy could more than doublethe potential global Internet market at a stroke.

The Gartner Group’s Nigel Deighton main-tains that, given current penetrations of mobileand Internet markets, the stage is set for aglobal boom in M-commerce that could large-ly ignore the PC in favor of mobile devices. Hepredicts further that some 30 to 50 percent ofB2B E-commerce will be carried out via amobile device by 2004.4 Motorola, for example,estimates that by 2005 the number of wirelessdevices with Internet access will exceed thenumber of wired ones. These smart new tele-phones will not only give another boost to thesale of mobiles, but they will change the natureof the Internet economy, making personalcomputers far less important, yet at the sametime tempting many more people onto theinformation superhighway.8

The author strongly believes that tradecannot be tied to wires. As so much researchindicates, a major part of the workforce isheading toward location independence. The


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y the endof 2001, 78 percent ofthe U.S.onlinepopulationwill be usingcellulartelephones for data.

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PC-based Internet has already redefined thenature of doing business, giving birth to pop-ular E-commerce. However, to be truly loca-tion independent and to be “anywhere,anytime,” the PC is not the choice for B2B andB2C M-commerce. Necessity is the mother ofall invention. M-commerce is already becom-ing a necessity in this age of the digital econ-omy. In conclusion, the world is betting onM-commerce, in a manner reminiscent of the1999 United States bet on Internet commerce.We can safely predict many losers, and a fewwinners, from the worldwide run to mobileInternet services. �

Notes1. Schwartz, Ephraim (2000a). “Wireless

Application Protocol draws criticism.”Available:http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/03/14/wap.critics.idg/index.html, March 14.

2. Herman, James (2000). “The ComingRevolution in M-Commerce,” BusinessCommunications Review, October, pp. 24–24.

3. Schwartz, Ephraim (2000b). “WAP: TheTechnology Everyone Loves To Hate.” Available:www.infoworld.com, June 23.

4. Murphy, Denis (1999.) “The Mobile EconomyBecomes a Reality,” Telecommunications,33(11), pp. 31–34.

5. Johnson, A. H. (1999). “WAP.” Computerworld,November 1, pp. 33–44.

6. Furchgott, Roy (2000). “Web to Go — Sort of :Today’s Net Phones Are O.K. for e-mail, butSurfing Is a Chore,” Business Week, February14, pp. 144.

7. Saunders, Stephen, Heywood, Peter, Dornan,Andrew, Bruno, Lee, and Allen, Lori (1999).“Wireless IP: Ready or Not, Here It Comes,”Data Communications, September, 28(12), pp.42–68.

8. Woolridge, Adrian (1999). Survey:Telecommunication — In Search of SmartPhones,” Economist, October, 353(8140), pp.12–16.

9. Krill, Paul (2000). Verisign Aims to SecureWireless Transactions. Available:http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/01/19/verisign.secure.idg/index.html, January 19.

10. Trombly, Maria (2000). Web Access Via CellPhone to Skyrocket This Year.” Available:http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/04/18/data.cell.idg/index.html andhttp://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/01/19/verisign.secure.idg/index.html.


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Please note: The conclusion paragraph from“A Practical Guide to Staff Augmentation andOutsourcing” (Christine B. Tayntor) wasinadvertently published incomplete from theWinter 2001 issue. We apologize for thiserror.

CONCLUSIONStaff augmentation and outsourcing are valu-able tools for the IT manager. Although theservices provided may seem similar, there arefundamental differences between them, andthey are most effective when used on specificfunctions. While outsourcing can reduce costsand free internal staff to work on higher-priority projects, it should be used only whenwork is clearly defined and when the compa-ny is willing to relinquish day-to-day control.for other projects, staff augmentation is a lessrisky although often more costly approach. �

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Documents

Wap: Transitional Technology for M-Commerce