Portal Prowling

Wireless Web browsing is limited only by portal choices.

Recreating the desktop Internet experience on the wireless handset may be the industry's Holy Grail. Service providers are chasing agreements with portals such as Yahoo!, Excite and others to transfer the desktop browser's navigable interface to the handset's small-size screen.

But therein lies what perhaps is the trickiest turn of the portal pursuit — overcoming the handset screen's counter-intuitive feel that many believe is keeping wireless Webbing from becoming a tool for the everyman.

"You need to completely redesign it to shape something that is useful on the screen," said Eddie Hold, Current Analysis senior analyst of wireless services. "Weather information, the top 10 favorite sites, those simply won't work."

So what will, now that WAP — the open global standard for providing communications between a mobile handset and the Internet — has leveled the playing field for service providers and portals alike?

Simple agreements between the two, such as Sprint PCS' deal with Yahoo!? How about cutting the cost of connecting to the Internet through the handset, thus potentially luring the mass of surfers tethered to landline dial-ups? Or maybe a dramatic re-birth of the handset to accommodate not only voice but business-to-consumer and business-to-business interactivity?

"It's going to be very important how intuitive these phones become," said Patrick McQuown of Proteus, an Internet development and consulting agency. "It could be the key."

Portal Popularity
In the Internet's early days, portals emerged as gateways to content — in many cases they were gussied-up search engines. It didn't take long for advertisers to sniff out the popularity of these online gathering places, and soon portals were transformed from mere online guides to all-in-one hyper-personal home sites, where one can get specific stock quotes, weather forecasts, birthday reminders and all the ads one could handle.

Many say the handset represents the portal's natural progression. Headlines and stock quotes served up in short order on a desktop monitor can be shrunk even further and formatted for the small screen, on phone sets or portable PDAs such as the Palm VII.

As wireless usage makes huge leaps, so does the number of Web-enabled pagers and handsets. About 800,000 WAP-capable phones were in use before the end of 1999, with the number expected to skyrocket to more than 25 million by the end of 2001, experts say.

But, so far, the overwhelming majority of such phones aimed at mainstream users limits messages to somewhere between 100 and 120 characters. That same majority of phones also is largely unable to handle sophisticated graphics — even the simple icons Web users are accustomed to on desktop browsers.

"These are what the eyeballs see. The desktop has conditioned us to see an advanced set of icons and graphics that we're just not getting on our phones," said McQuown.

Specifically, low-graphics screens have severely limited wireless' ability to deliver the kinds of interactive advertising opportunities so crucial to the Internet's dizzying growth.

But like any good investor who buys low and sells high, blue-chip portals such as Yahoo!, Excite, Lycos and MSN aren't waiting on the handset. Instead they're aggressively chasing content agreements with service providers now in a ground-floor effort to cash in later when wireless devices catch up to the PC.

Sprint PCS' agreement with Yahoo! is just one example. Savvy wireless users and Internet buffs may scoff at text-only e-mails, stock quotes and headlines from Yahoo! as groundbreaking stuff, but analysts say you can't discount the "gee-whiz" factor the arrangement presents to those who still see the wireless handset as the stuff of Dick Tracy.

Sprint PCS is "one of the only ones that are playing this game right," McQuown said. "How much use it has for the end-consumer — that remains to be seen."

Another pioneer in the portal game has been Microsoft, which last summer launched MSN Mobile. The service pushes data to pagers and mobile phones that can receive text.

Microsoft, Sprint and others want to put in each user's hands a commercial portal allowing users the familiar 1-way communications — weather, stock quotes, e-mails and personal alerts — but also a 2-way portal that lets users sell stock, cancel a flight or make restaurant reservations.

"MSN hasn't exactly set the world on fire with its service or portal, but they're being aggressive on the mobile side, building partnerships with providers to be the interface with mobile phones," said Current Analysis' Hold.

Hold's advice for service providers looking for a portal pot of gold? Go after an established portal and leverage its popularity.

"Why reinvent the wheel?" he asked. "They have it, they have the content relationships. Just get them to modify it and add a new delivery mechanism. Instead, it is far more useful to piggyback off the success of the current portals, attempting to persuade even a small percentage of these users to adopt a wireless version. Going into competition against the Yahoo!s of this world is a bad move."

Going with a brand-name portal lends near-instant credibility and could pull in a hotly emerging demographic: the Internet-savvy but wireless-less consumer.

"They can leverage the name of Yahoo!, or MSN Mobile or whichever they pick," Hold said. "One percent of Yahoo!'s customer base would be a great market for any of the wireless-service providers."

But don't read Hold and others wrong. The advantages of picking up on the brand-name success of a Yahoo! or Excite doesn't mean the wireless industry needs portals more than portals need wireless.

As wireless sets become more ubiquitous (news of 60%+ wireless penetration in Europe is sure eventually to become a domestic headline for the United States, analysts say) and their Internet capabilities adjust accordingly, the symbiotic relationship will be cemented. Users, it's hoped, will come to depend heavily on the handset for an Internet connection and put more minutes on the network, or, at least, upgrade their bundled minutes.

Meanwhile, the increased traffic is a payoff for the portals, which can use the exclusivity through the service provider to step up customer profiling — via the user's ability to personalize a portal — and target goods more efficiently.

But a big name alone won't carry both industries to such a promised land. The clunky interface still nags, not to mention the cost of all that portal/Web surfing — both to the consumer through connection costs and to the service provider through decreased bandwidth.

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Handset Screens: It Won't Be Long

The handset is clearly the conduit of convergence in wireless telecom. But judging by many of today's top-selling phones, the unit may be its own worst enemy.

Interfaces are clumsy. The 12-button dial-pad wasn't envisioned as a keyboard, much less a mouse surfing the Web.

The Ericsson R 380 is one of the latest stabs at the heart of counter-intuitiveness. Motorola and Qualcomm also are developing smarter smart phones.

Even if Ericsson's new model can't take full-color graphics, the advancements are nonetheless another step toward the inevitability predicted by wireless futurists everywhere: Handset screens will rival the desktop monitor one day.

When that day comes, service providers, WAP developers and end users can expect an experience much like that of today's PC-based Internet.

"Just as the Internet has developed to the point where you do everything on it, the wireless industry will transition in the same way, but in a quicker way because it's leveraging the existing services on the wire-based connection," said Eddie Hold, Current Analysis senior analyst of wireless services.

One step in that direction is deals such as the one between Ameritrade and Sprint PCS.

That optimism has confident service providers and portal developers hurriedly announcing mergers, agreements and roll-outs:

• WEB2PCS.COM has added North American wireless-service providers to its roster of providers offering its free portal service. The service gives free personalized information to North American PCS phone subscribers and to alphanumeric pager users with devices equipped to handle short messages. The company also joined Phone.com, whose interactive browser allows mobile users to instantly access WAP-formatted content through a wireless device.

• Phone.com reached a deal in December to buy @Motion, an emerging provider of voice portal technology. @Motion's Internet Voice Portal will voice-enable Phone.com's MyPhone mobile portal and add voice communications services, including unified messaging, to MyPhone.

• MicroStrategy is fueling its portal strategy — known as Strategy.com — to leverage WAP to allow anyone with an Internet-enabled phone to access personalized information.

• Telstreet.com, a leading electronic retailer of wireless phones, service plans and accessories, has an agreement with Yahoo!, which provides wireless products and services to the portal's shoppers.

Terry Dwyer, Telstreet.com president & CEO, said carriers ultimately will benefit from being where the consumer is — online.

"Telstreet.com's strategy is to work closely with portals and provide their customers the opportunity to make an easy and confident choice when purchasing wireless phones, service and accessories," Dwyer said.

Wireless-service providers don't stand to lose ownership of their customers' information by teaming with a separate portal.

"Ultimately the customer is the carrier's. They own the customer information and the ongoing relationship," Dwyer said. "The question becomes, 'Where do consumers go to get the best wireless information, selection and ease of purchase?' Many carriers are seeing the advantages of working with independent sites that offer these things to consumers while still accurately representing the carrier's brand and offerings.

"Online wireless aggregators ... provide an additional solution for the carriers who want to reach the growing number of wireless consumers interested in convenience, choice and ease of purchase. All these elements are available to consumers through online retail sites and portals."

The idea of a customer buying goods and services through Telstreet via the handset assumes the customer has enough money left over after paying for the wireless Internet connection, which won't be cheap, at least not for the near future.

For instance, adding the Wireless Web option to a Sprint PCS' Web-enabled phone — equipped with the MiniBrowser, from Phone.com — runs $9.99 for 50 Web minutes and 50 Web updates. Users can access Yahoo!, Amazon.com, Mapquest.com and other sites.

Some observers say that price may be acceptable for top-tier professionals, but too steep to lure mainstream users who pay $21.95 or less to an ISP for unlimited surfing on the desktop.

"That's a very expensive way to surf the Web," Hold said, adding that carriers probably will be forced one day to craft billing schemes that charge the Web user only when the handset is sending or receiving data "You can easily peak over your 500 minutes a month just with your Web usage."

Clark (caclark@earthlink.net) is a freelance writer based in Kansas City, MO.