FINDING THE ELUSIVE BUSINESS MOBILE APP

If 2003 was the year for consumer wireless data applications, 2004 will be the year for enterprises apps. In 2004, new CDMA 1x EV-DO and EDGE networks will join the 1x and GPRS networks running data and data speeds will be fast enough for the horizontal business markets to take wireless data seriously.

“The deployment of these networks will be truly paradigm-shifting events,” said Mark Desautels, vice president of wireless Internet development for CTIA. “It's hard to make the case for business with the bursty types of applications today's networks support, but the move to more robust networks will enable more and more business applications.”

While smart devices enabled with new wireless operating systems are getting a lot of attention, Desautels said that the first wave of enterprise applications will not be as exciting. Most will be laptop-centric, focusing on standard business connectivity and security needs. Expect new wireless VPN clients, new wireless security software and the like. While the vertical markets have produced demand for new types of application and even new devices, the horizontal markets will most likely be focused on the standard set of business applications found on a desktop PC, Desautels said.

“Corporate users still need the functionality that only a laptop can bring,” he said. “The difference is that the corporate IT folks — and the CIOs and CFOs that make the decisions — will find that these new networks will offer pretty compelling arguments for taking their workforces mobile.”

The consumer side likely will see some innovation, however, injecting more multimedia features into current MMS applications. And digital ringtones are expected to take off next year, as are more advanced levels of wireless gaming.

The critical aspect in the consumer market is handset replacement — getting the old second-generation digital phones out of peoples hands and replacing them with new enhanced phones. Vendors are releasing new batches of enhanced devices in time for the holiday season — many of them far more affordable than the multimedia handsets sold in the last year.

The ramp up towards enhanced devices is expected to be almost as fast as the transition from analog to digital networks. According to Allied Business Intelligence, in three years the number of enhanced devices sold will equal the number of low-end handsets. And between 2007 and 2008 the percentage of low-end handsets sold will fall below 10%. At that point, those low-end sales will be primarily in developing countries, and almost every phone sold in a major wireless market will have some multimedia or data capability, according to ABI.