Great Expectations

Which comes first: consumer demand or supplier greed? And in this IT age, when your average end user doesn't know that he needs something until he's bullied into it by early adopters, does it matter who initiates the demand?

Ovum, an industry research and consulting firm, recently scolded the mobile e-commerce market — or, at least, the forward-thinkers who hope to lead this yet-to-be niche — for exhibiting too much aggression in their prophecies.

"It's debatable whether ordinary consumers are actually demanding mobile e-commerce services right now," said Jeremy Matthews, an Ovum analyst.

"It's more a case of suppliers sensing an opportunity to make money and pushing the idea at them."

Well ... sniff, sniff. There's a perspective that is charming in its noble embrace of the consumer.

"People are going to expect all these wonderful services. And when they don't get them, there's going to be disillusionment, and then the market takes a downturn," Matthews continued. But it utterly ignores how business gets done in this sector.

All sarcasm aside, it's an understandable perspective, this concern for promises that beat reality to the starting gate. Three years ago, when AOL enticed millions of new subscribers with an in-your-face (on your television, in your mailbox, via your friends) campaign, then crashed and burned in its ability to actually deliver convenient access, commentators (including me) slapped them around for promising big, delivering small. But guess what? AOL now has nearly three times the number of subscribers and is in the position to acquire no less a conglomerate than Time Warner. Although that's not a business model to emulate, it does demonstrate that too much fuss (including my own) over promising only what you can deliver is just that ... too much fuss.

There was a time when the responsible business kept its forecast of product offerings in check. Of course, that's not necessarily been the case in the wireless world, where the wave of demand — not just a ripple of early adoption, but a true consumer-majority tsunami — can take years to fully form. Who can blame suppliers (including equipment and software manufacturers, as well as the service providers in most direct contact with the end user) for talking up the future in an attempt to win customers today?

This is especially appropriate to the wireless e-commerce segment, an infant market that already is taking on the characteristics of the wireless-data killer app. It will be a slower stumble to success, though, if players gently embrace potential users with mere testimonials of been-there, done-that reality. Wireless is as close to science-fiction-becomes-fact (except, of course, for that cloned sheep) as we've seen in the past decade, and consumers aren't caught off guard by the what-ifs that accompany that position.

Are potential subscribers put off by the fact they they've been reading about wireless data for five years without a sure-bet application to show for it in May 2000? Well, yeah, some probably are.

Does that mean they won't embrace the reality of mobile e-commerce once it reaches maturity? Not bloody likely!

Since that Ovum research came out, have you trimmed back the dreamy promises in your ad campaigns? Share all your unkept promises by writing to dsextro@primediabusiness.com.