Letters To The Editor
Mobile: The Next Killer App:  Some Comments

We got quite a few interesting comments about our article on Synching as a Mobile Application.  Some readers got the impression that I thought it was the ONLY candidate for a killer app and wanted to nominate something else.  Others thought voice came first (I thought I had said that, by pointing out how well cell phones had already caught on.)

In any case, let the readers speak.  

Amy:

We Didn’t Consider Instant Messaging (IM)

Your analysis covers many of the possible applications for wireless text, but it misses the application that seems to be most promising in commercial potential and most viable using current technology: instant messaging.

Like most articles about the potential of wireless, the column focuses on fighting the last war: how do we move the wired Internet experience onto an underpowered, slow, small handheld device? The question almost answers itself. Current screens are too small for Web browsing. Connection speeds are too slow for data transfer. Memory and processing power are too limited for significant local applications. Keypad design makes data entry too difficult. One by one, the limitations raise barriers to almost all important applications, at least until magic bullets like 3G and better handsets come along to save the day. Someday.

But take a close look at instant messaging. In the wired Internet, IM is a well-accepted means of communication - just ask any 15-year-old. It's also gaining acceptance in the corporate world, through authorized and unauthorized use of personal IM products like AOL Instant Messenger and through corporate groupware products like Sametime and Groove. IM offers a middle ground between the immediacy of a phone call and the persistence of email, and allows people to treat conversation as an integrated part of their workday rather than as an interruption. IM could become a communication tool on a par with the telephone, but for one problem: when you leave your desk, you can't take it with you. Because there are no mobile clients, IM's reach extends only as far as the desktop - much like the telephone network before cellular. What the world needs, to make IM a text alternative to the voice telephone, is a good mobile IM client.

Mobile IM is the killer app for wireless text, and it's within reach using today's technology. Unlike other wireless applications, IM does not depend on the transfer of large amounts of data. Messages tend to be small, and presence information is even smaller. Most IM content is text, which can be displayed acceptably well on cellular phone screens. The application to send, receive and display messages and buddy list information should be small and simple, well within the native capabilities of modern cell phones. And as for text entry, corporate executives (many of whom are very comfortable using Graffiti on their Palms) might be able to learn a bit about message shorthand from their teenage sons and daughters. Or they could buy Treos, or BlackBerry phones, or one of the many text-optimized cell phones that will spring up if wireless text catches on.

And talk about synergy. Mobile IM would benefit both mobile and IM providers. Message delivery over the air would offer the telcos a new revenue source, whether they charged on a subscription basis or per-message, and would probably lead to increased voice traffic as people learn to shift conversations back and forth between text and voice. And IM, which has already grown explosively on the desktop, would have a whole new client base. An IM service that spans PCs and mobile devices could give text messaging parity with voice communications, and could see adoption rates similar to those the telcos experienced when they introduced cellular telephone services.

There are companies that are already well on their way to developing wireless IM services for the American market. Check out the work being done by Openwave, whose products will run on 2.5G networks, and Comverse.

And for precedent, just look anywhere else in the world. European telcos added SMS to their GSM phone standard as an afterthought, as a way of distributing official announcements from telcos, and messaging became a dominant consumer application in that market. Messaging was also the breakthrough application for NTT DoCoMo's i-mode service in Japan. It happened there; it can happen here. Soon, I hope.

Rich Stillman

NOTE from the Editor:

I think Richard brings up an important idea.  It’s one that I have by-passed, largely because I’m not an IM user.  I think most people who use or want to use IM in business are personal IM users – I’m not.  At work I sit at my computer whenever I’m in the office and I use email as my preferred method of communication.  I really use it like IM but without the interruption of letting people know whether I’m available or not.  I chose to reply or not to.  At home, I only sit down at the computer once or twice, usually for short periods of time – not a typical IM profile.  I think a good question is whether there are lots of business users who want to use the technology.  I don’t know that answer.

Amy

Cultural Implications Of Mobility

My good friend Mark Stahlman, who has written here before, comments on the topic of privacy.

Amy:

A little recognized FACT (by most of the people I've ever spoken with about Japanese markets) -- PRIVACY is a very precious commodity (in particular in the consumer market since so many young people live at home with their parents).

In addition, as McLuhan noted, Americans go OUTSIDE to be alone, whereas many others go OUTSIDE to be social . . . thus "mobility" has *very* different connotations in different cultures.

Mark

Mark:

I agree that privacy is important in Japan, but my observation -- from visiting and working there -- is that it means something different to a Japanese person than it does to us.  A Japanese person can achieve privacy by simply not looking at or seeing something -- so that co-ed naked bathing is perfectly respectable at the Okura hotel's hot tub, which shocked me at first -- because no one "sees" anyone else. 

I'm not at all sure I agree with the comment that Americans go outside to be alone and others go outside to be social.  There's plenty of American literature that's based upon people who seek privacy in indoor solitude and reams of family sociology written about American children who slam their doors or put Do Not Disturb signs on them to achieve privacy in doors.

I think this is a cultural thing.

Amy

Voice Is The Killer App

Christopher Jaggi thinks that we’ll keep adding to the voice-related applications.  

Amy

Amy, the mobile killer app is already on the market and used by more than a billion people: mobile voice.

There's a second killer app: a voice-mailbox for the mobile phone, also used by hundreds of millions of people.

There will be more voice-related killer apps.

Mobile might just be another word for having local access to people (voice) and data when you are on the road. This does not necessarily mean that the data is remote.

The Internet is not the web. You can have mobile applications that use the Internet, but do not touch the web at all. The Internet is a transport mechanism.

I'm working on a paper, which looks at some of those things in more detail, so I will be able to share more stuff.

Christopher Jaggi  

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