Who is tomorrow’s paging user?
RCR asked that question of a number of industry execs. Each one had a little different twist on the same theme. PageMart Wireless CEO John Beletic put is succinctly, “The paging user of tomorrow is anyone between the ages of 5 and 105 who enjoys the benefits of being in touch.”
It is the business person. It is the consumer. And one of the responses most often garnered, it is the machine.
Motorola Inc.’s Larry Conlee noted that the paging user of tomorrow will page his hot tub to turn itself on after a hard day’s work. (Get to work applications designers, the world needs this service!)
Eric Weinstein, an analyst with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corp., agrees. “Some operators are starting to focus more on the commercial side for telemetry-type applications. After all, paging networks are ideally designed for low-cost, store-and-forward delivery of short data messages. Development of this area has so far been weak, but some operators are starting to spot opportunities in automated meter reading and remote inventory management service. Because of the need for guaranteed messaging, this is really an opportunity for two-way operators. Evolution of the paging industry will not be without its bumps, as the stock market would imply, but it is certainly here to stay.”
The consumer market will see growth, said Julie Rietman, an analyst with IDC/Link. “Specialized niche markets will grow. One market will be the teen-age and pre-teen market as well as a market for children. For example, a kindergarten kid could be given a pager in the form of a necklace or a device that could be placed in a backpack. It would have a GPS system to inform parents of children’s whereabouts and their safety. This is not too far off. We might see this in the next five years. In our survey data, 80 percent of people who don’t use paging have never even considered buying a pager.”
Paging carriers no longer fear the cannibalization of their business from broadband PCS companies. The paging industry may still lose the sophisticated business user to a PCS service that can provide messaging features.
But there will be new markets to tap, new customers to convert and new applications to be developed. In short, the paging industry is evolving.
The paging user of tomorrow likely won’t even recognize that the technology that drives the applications he uses was once called a beeper.
