Networker: M-commerce
BY GREG HARRIS
Forget e-commerce, now it's "m-commerce".
In case you missed it, e-commerce is the ability to buy and sell things electronically, usually over the internet. It is divided into separate categories. "B2B" is business trading with business, such as a car company buying parts from a group of parts companies, and "B2C" is business to consumer, buying a book or groceries over the internet.
B2B usually involves core computer systems (servers) "talking" to each other over the internet or special data phone lines. B2C is generally a consumer with a personal computer, laptop, i-Mac or whatever communicating with a remote server over the internet.
According to some, that is all outdated and is soon to be replaced by "mobile commerce" (m-commerce). M-commerce is accompanied by a whole new set of devices.
The humble analog mobile phone has been replaced by generation after generation of new devices to emerge as the WAP (wireless application protocol) phone. Pocket calculators, diaries and electronic organisers have been reborn as the "palmtops" and given wireless capability in tiny geographical locations (e.g., the middle of New York City). The venerable laptop is also being given wireless capability in even smaller locations (within a few metres of a display stand at a computer fair).
Imagine doing your entire grocery shopping from a mobile phone that doesn't have a keyboard. The way it works is when you want to type a letter you scroll up and down a list of the whole alphabet and press a button when you get to the right place. If nothing else it will encourage people to buy products with short names.
Sales projections for m-commerce are stupendous. A typical one is to compare the total number of WAP-enabled mobile phones that will be sold within the next few years (supposedly 600 million) with the total number of internet users (maybe 300 million).
There is an element of truth in this claim. Due to the predominance of European (rather than US) companies in the mobile phone arena, a set of standards has emerged, which will be incorporated into the overwhelming majority of mobile phones manufactured in future.
However, at present, virtually all mobile phones are used for making phone calls to people or for the sort of very simple services that used to be provided by pagers (alarms, short messages, stock market prices).
When the British government last week sold off some new mobile phone licenses, it expected to raise about $8 billion. It received seven times that much! As with such auctions in the past in Australia and elsewhere, many of the companies paying this money will never make a profit from it.
On the one hand, this gives an idea of the amount of hype surrounding new technologies. Companies seeing no benefit in investing in actual production will speculate on future possible market control.
On the other hand, corporate enthusiasm for m-commerce underlines the problems that capitalism is having making money out of the traditional internet. This is caused by a combination of the technical characteristics of the internet, its traditional developers and the habits of internet users (most of whom have no interest in buying anything at all).
The WAP networks (which aren't part of the internet) are a first attempt to build an alternative, controlled and profitable world network of consumers.