Get ready, the wireless world as we know it is going to change-again.
When we look back at 1998 in wireless to see which announcements impacted the industry, it may very well be the recent alliances in wireless data were the yeast that caused the wireless data bread to rise.
But the rise of wireless data very well could change how operators and vendors function, so say experts. Carriers and vendors traditionally have been partners in directing the future of wireless services. It sounds like they will give up some of that control in exchange for growth in the wireless data industry.
The Internet is changing the world. Pick up a consumer newspaper and within a week, you will find an article about online shopping this holiday season.
The terms e-commerce and I-commerce are starting to become more familiar as Generation X redefines shopping into something done less at the mall and more on the keyboard. Barnes & Noble is featuring its virtual bookstore in its advertising this season. MasterCard also is jumping onboard. Its holiday advertising features a mother playing with the kids at home, shopping online, instead of running to stores.
So as the explosion in wireless data launches, the wireless industry should be prepared for a little less control over an emerging marketplace.
Jane Zweig, an executive at research company Herschel Shosteck Associates Ltd., predicts, “Competing infrastructures, participants and technologies from the three network industries-wireless, landline and the Internet-will eventually destroy traditional views of wireless.”
“Applications in the future wireless market will be defined by corporate users and the Internet-not by network operators or terminal manufacturers … In the traditional wireless model, the network operator largely controlled the end user-in terminal sales, distribution channels, value services, (and) tariffs, to name a few. `Ownership of the customer’ will be the first concept to die in the new wireless world,” Zweig commented.
Wow. Another paradigm shift. Who’d have thunk it?
