TECH TO GO

Who cares about WAP? Teens do

By Andy Walker, Cyberwalker Media Syndicate

Canadian mobile phone companies touting Internet-enabled phones say their subscribers are enthusiastic about accessing e-mail and the Web on mobile phones, especially when it comes to younger customers.

This despite the apparent shortcoming of typing on a handset's keypad and viewing information on a tiny monochrome screen. While adults are perhaps less excited about Web phones, nimble-fingered teens are more accommodating.

The demographic "that has greatest acceptance of web phones is youth," explained Jennifer Bromley, associate director of wireless Internet services marketing at Bell Mobility in Toronto. "Some kids can type up to 80 words a minute. That may seem extraordinary on one hand, but they are typical early adopters of the technology, and once you get use to it and get over learning, curve it's actually not that hard."

Kids around the world are driving mobile phone usage, especially mobile electronic messaging. A Sprint PCS marketeer in the U.S. recently told me that when Filipino teens were challenged to typing their country's national anthem on their mobile phones they completed the task in under a minute. I'd barely get past "O Canada," which - by the way - is 666-#-222-2-66-2-3-2 on an Ericsson phone.

Perhaps at 33, I'm too old. Maybe my fingers are too sausage-like.

While wireless Web phones - also known as WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) phones - are convenient to use as an anywhere, anytime access device, they are used differently than people use the Internet on desktop computers. Telus spokesman Mark Langton figures there are gulppers and nibblers. He pointed at findings that Telus users who consume news wirelessly take different approaches. The company offers news from both of Canada's national newspapers. "The Post offers short pieces, headline and paragraph-long synopsis, while the Globe offers full stories some 1,000 words in length or more," said Langton. "Each approach has its adherents."

When WAP surfers send information wirelessly, they frugally send short chunks of text. Predictive software that guesses at words as they're being typed helps on some phones. Plus, linguistic students take note, a weird short-form text language is developing.

Recently Nokia gave me "Text Me," a dictionary of short-form text messages published by Penguin Books (ISBN: 0-670-91079-1). It includes cryptic terms such as "D u wnt 2 go out 2nite" (Do you want to go out tonight?), which may generate the response: SUFID (screwing up face in disgust). To which the snubbed messenger might further retort: TYVLYWEL (thank you very little, you're welcome even less). Rejection still hurts, even on a four line text-based monochrome screen.

Back in the grownup world, both Telus, which now owns Clearnet, and Bell Mobility, claim some significant WAP usage numbers in Canada.

Telus is getting 12 million page hits a week to their wireless portal. Of those, more than four million use the company's two-way e-mail service.

Bell Mobility is getting nine million hits per month to their wireless portal from 385,000 users. The hit-rate is growing by about 25 per cent a month. Telus' usage has doubled since the fall and continues to grow at a double-digit rate each week.

Rogers AT&T and Microcell's Fido declined to give their numbers. Note that, in my experience, companies give out numbers under two conditions. When they are legislated to do so or when the news is good. Make your own assumptions about Rogers AT&T and Fido's lack of usage statistics.

But it's clear that all WAPsurfers are hot for e-mail on mobile phones.

"The most interest is from people who want to look at their e-mail on public portals like the AOLs, the MSNs and the Excites," said David Neale, VP of new product development at Rogers AT&T Wireless. "A windows into that is very helpful for them."
Neale figures people are using the device to stay tuned into what e-mail has arrived and don't generally respond to the e-mails on their phones. Bell Mobility and Telus say their users actually answer e-mail on their phones.

"We know that from network data, but even the 4 million hits a week to TELUSmail underline that there's simply a whale of two-way going," said Langton.

When it comes to simple information retrieval, WAP surfers are accessing games, financial information and traffic information.

Telus users, who apparently have a sense of humour, accessed 577,891 jokes so far in 2001. They're also playful. More than 1.5 million games were played in one week in March. And as far as money goes, clients used Telus' top financial services 55,893 times one busy week this year.

Weather is of interest, as well. "The human race is totally obsessed with weather," said Rogers AT&T's Neale, "whether it is weather where they are or where they are going."
There's also a growing interest in SMS or Short Messaging Service. That's a real-time chat-like function where mobile phone users fire short text messages at each other. The feature particularly charms Europeans and Asians, but it has failed to catch on in Canada and the U.S. because users can't send SMS bulletins between wireless phone carriers. That will change soon, as carriers are building SMS gateways between their networks. It makes sense: in some parts of the world, revenues from SMS outpace revenues from voice services.

Meanwhile, instant messaging is being adopted while SMS gateways are being built. Instant messaging companies, such as America Online, Microsoft Network and Yahoo!, have built wireless functionality into their IM products so that a user can send an instant message from their desktop computer or wireless device.

"It's being used a lot for homework and it gets into workgroups in the business environment," said Neale.

Compared to European SMS use, Neale said North American IM users have a long way to go. "Empirically, North American traffic is 10 to 15 per cent of what we hear in Europe, but it is changing by the day."

Rogers AT&T is so keen on the Canadian youth market that it has developed iD Wireless, a product specifically for 12- to 24-year-old mobile phone users.

Members get a Panasonic TX210 Digital PCS wireless phone not available to anyone else. They also get access to a Web site where they can customize youth-oriented wireless information that gets sent to the phone. Rogers AT&T plans to give special access to interactive games, downloadable ring tones and graphics for iD phones. The company is also giving away unlimited text messaging under the plan.

That's pretty smart strategy. Then again, so is Bell Mobility's angle. They give away WAP surfing for free with many of their plans. I may still get bitten by the WAP bug, especially as new colour phones with big juicy mouse-driven screens start arriving. Based on market expectations, you will too.

TTLN4N. ML. (That's the lot for now. More later.)