From M-Commerce to Instant Messaging - A Survey of the Hottest Applications and Technologies Making the Wireless Web the Internet of the Future

With over a billion mobile devices coming online over the next three-four years, wireless Internet - the convergence point for the world’s fastest-growing technologies - will overtake terrestrial Internet services in size and importance. Analysts’ predictions point to this phenomenon. For example: Dataquest predicts a 60% compound annual growth rate for these services through 2003; The Yankee Group predicts over 600 million Internet-ready mobile phone owners by 2003; and Gartner Group expects more wireless Internet devices in use than PCs by the year 2002.

The opportunities are tremendous. From m-commerce to location-based services to messaging and collaboration to entertainment & gaming, the applications are apparent and the demand demonstrated. NTT’s DoCoMo has become Japan’s largest ISP with over 20 million I-mode subscribers accessing over 41,000 phone-ready content sites. And many of these applications are introducing a new, younger market segment to the mobile phone.

Issues to be examined: