The Personal Communications Industry Association stands at a huge crossroads, once again trying to reinvent itself. Though it may have had its best fiscal year in history in 1999, PCIA has structural problems. It’s a painful time for the association, which recently eliminated 10 positions, saw key employees leave and watched its membership dwindle severely. Sprint PCS, Nokia and Ericsson are some of the newest non-members of PCIA. To make matters worse, big names like Lucent, Nokia, Ericsson, Nortel and Qualcomm are noticeably absent from the exhibitors list for the association’s upcoming trade show in September. Some industry players see PCIA and its trade show as an unnecessary duplication of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
Now, it appears PCIA is banking its survival on the impending marriage of the Internet and the mobile phone, the hottest concept today in the wireless industry. It is aggressively wooing Internet and computing companies to become members and has changed its upcoming trade show name to PCIA GlobalXChange to reflect its strong desire to bring wireless carriers and dotcom companies together.
Will this strategy work? It’s doubtful. Successfully wooing the Microsofts and the Yahoo!s of the world to get its primary customers-carriers and vendors-back is a backward strategy. Can PCIA really reinvent itself when the stars are not aligned to begin with? It may be the only hope PCIA has, and it will be a struggle. CTIA already has the carriers, the vendors and the key relationships with the Internet community. This was evident at CTIA’s trade show last month, where Microsoft’s Bill Gates drew in the crowds. The Wireless Data Forum has been part of CTIA since 1998, and today has more than 100 members working together to promote the wireless data market.
PCIA believes there’s plenty of business to be done in the Internet space as herds of dotcom companies are running to embrace the wireless community. Many are dying to be noticed and want to promote themselves as much as possible, and carriers and vendors want to know who these companies are. So PCIA’s strategy could turn out to be a success this year.
But just as droves of companies we’ve never heard of embrace the wireless data community, droves of companies we’ve never heard of will fall out. The shakeout in this sector will come as carriers and vendors make their decisions about who they want to do business with. And, as much as the industry hopes wireless data will become another bread-and-butter business like voice service, the business case for widespread enthusiastic use of wireless data still is unproven. PCIA may find itself next year struggling to reinvent itself once again.
