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Going Wireless
Transform Your Business with Mobile Technology

Chapter One

Defining the M-Commerce Opportunity

"It's going to be the most fantastic thing the time-starved world has ever seen."

Hyperbole? Not to Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com's chief executive, who voiced this statement. In fact, he'll take his prognostication a step further by declaring that by 2010, 100 percent of his company's transactions will take place wirelessly.

Amazon.com boarded the mobile bandwagon in late 1999, about the same time as rival barnesandnoble.com. While the mobile wing of bn.com has been quoted as saying that sales are exceeding their projections, no one is yet discussing actual metrics—the who, what, where, why, and how, including specific revenue figures. Nonetheless, we are starting to get hints, and some of the behavior is a little surprising.

For example, Amazon.com's biggest sellers via wireless connectivity are not books, but music—the pop and R&B genres, to be exact. And, yes, people have purchased large-screen TVs and equally expensive digital camcorders while on the go. Fittingly, Amazon.com's "Amazon Anywhere" platform is delivering on the anywhere part with purchases from dozens of countries, including Peru, Algeria, and Malaysia.

So what does this data tell us? That mobile commerce (m-commerce) may be about commerce on the go, but how it is adapted, who adapts it, and exactly how it fits into a bigger commerce picture remains a mystery.

As you can see already, defining the term m-commerce is equally mystifying, as we consider the various models that fit under the mobile commerce banner.The first one up is mostassociated with the phrase. It's transactional mobile commerce, meaning you will buy a thing or service entirely through a wireless device. Because of the screen and speed limitations of the mobile units being used to transact, in most cases you will sign up using a traditional interface—big monitor and keyboard—to prepare an account for use on the go. The information supplied includes your preferred delivery address for goods and the credit card you want to use so that it takes a minimal amount of time. Amazon.com's 1-Click is a perfect example. Also, look for electronic wallets to be used across a bevy of commerce sites that offer this simplicity.

Building on this m-commerce model, we will see mobile fulfillment as part of the transactional process. You can buy a movie ticket, and a bar code representing the paper ticket would be downloaded to your device and scanned as you enter the theater. A similar scenario holds true for entertainment. You'll buy a book, a song, or a game and it will download automatically to your wireless device. Amazon.com, for example, is already set up on their main site for the downloading of e-books and music, so expect them to be one of the first in wireless as well.

Adult Entertainment Sets the Trend, Again

However, if we are being candid, the unspoken forerunner in the arena of full-circle m-commerce experiences—purchase and fulfillment—is adult entertainment, which has a history of legitimizing technology dating back to the introduction of the VCR in 1970s and 1980s and business models such as renting entertainment.

In the online world, we saw Web sites for adults perfecting technologies that would mainstream later, such as real-time credit processing, live Web video, and advanced advertising techniques like those annoying pop-up boxes.

Now add to the technology picture the fact that adult-only entertainment is one of e-commerce's biggest success stories (over $1 billion annually), and you see how quickly wireless is being adapted.

Why is this? Not only is there high demand for the content, but the people who consume it are indicative of the first-phase, m-commerce users: young men who are early technology adopters. When they were the first users of the Net, the most popular phrase submitted for searches was "sex." Now that the genders and ages have balanced in online usage, "sex" places a mere third on the Internet search top 10, the first being "travel."

When you consider the degree to which wireless devices offer privacy and discretion that is not possible with laptops and desktops, you have a better understanding of how even more explosive adult entertainment can be in mobile, once the technologies to support it are perfected.

In the meantime, the choice of sites is proliferating. The world's first adult entertainment portal for PDAs was SinPalm.com, a free site supported by advertising that allows users to download risqué stories and photographs to their handheld devices. Kathryn Hudson, co-founder of the site with her husband, explains that SinPalm.com is cherished by executives who read the stories during unbearably boring meetings. It helps them take "their focus off of work and their hectic lives," says Hudson.

On the other end of the adult spectrum, the Hudsons have launched an industry first, a dating service for handhelds called PocketPersonals.com, whose slogan is "Love is in the air—everywhere."

While the Hudsons adult business ventures are entrepreneurial, the biggest producers of adult entertainment are also tuning in to the wireless wavelength. Penthouse magazine, for example, offers centerfold photos for downloading to handheld devices. The decision to repurpose their content was an easy one for the magazine. "There is a huge demand," a Penthouse spokesperson confesses. "People are saying that now they can take Penthouse to the beach. Yes, I know they've always been able to take Penthouse to the beach, but this way it is a lot more discreet."

Betting On M-Commerce

Content complementary with these adult offerings is wireless gambling. If discretion and privacy are the benefits of wireless to "red light" content, then the watchword for mobile wagering is "convenience."

Anyone in Germany can easily play lotto with their cell phones. Eurobet, one of the world's largest Internet sports betting emporiums, offers mobile gambling with exceptional precision and...

Going Wireless
Transform Your Business with Mobile Technology. Copyright © by Jaclyn Easton. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.