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Our Take: Contradictions and crosscurrents

September/October 2001

One of the bemusing and occasionally vexing aspects to covering the mobile data industry is the ubiquity of contradictory viewpoints. You may come fresh from a conversation with a vendor, analyst or consultant, convinced by their positive view on the maturation of, say, location-based services, only to find a report from a leading analyst group that says immature technology and privacy issues will delay that sector’s revenue peak.

It’s clear location-based services will be a cornerstone of the mobile experience as people shed the desktop paradigm that has governed the first wave of applications and services. That’s the intuitive view: once you’re mobile, where you are rules your informational needs.

Obviously there are crosscurrents. In this issue, in a feature on data mining, Usama Fayyad, principal at digiMine, suggests that if the predictive abilities of data mining reach a level that surprises subscribers, the salient point is how that can be leveraged to offer value.

In Fayyad’s view, the utility of such tailored offerings will trump any invasive aspects of the experience. In the same article, David Sobel, counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, points out that regulatory aspects of privacy remain in flux – legislation is in play. He says the mere existence of data on specific subscribers endangers privacy. Its use should be controlled by subscribers.

Cahners In-Stat Group, owned by the same parent as Wireless Internet Magazine, recently surveyed early adopters of mobile data and found keen interest in location services – even a willingness (pay close attention here) to pay for them. That is, if subscribers can opt-in and they retain control over how their location information is used.

Meanwhile, data mining itself seems to offer new insights into how mobile data users behave and what they find useful. That may well play a role in shaping the direction of an industry beset by crosscurrents of infrastructure, network architecture, handset functionality, applications and services–not to mention evolving business models.

Competition and competing standards and technology choices in the United States will make these apparent contradictions and crosscurrents an asset domestically, according to our op-ed essayist David Sosa, of Analysis Group/Economics. Every feature and department in this issue addresses a major trend or assumption faced by the mobile data industry. The viewpoints may even contradict each other. But then, that’s why we’re here – to encourage discussion on the evolving wireless Internet.  

—Phil Carson
E-mail: pcarson@cahners.com