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Our Take:
The Year in Review

by brad smith
November/December 2001

The holidays are almost upon us once again, a time for families, a time of hope and reflection. This is the time of the year when we start thinking about how we might have done things differently … and making those "I swear I'll keep it" resolutions. Maybe it's a cultural thing, but it seems like Jan. 1 is somehow spoiled without a little looking back and looking forward. So, let's reflect a little on the wireless Internet. And I promise not to mention Scrooge once.

If we use the pages of Wireless Internet Magazine to assess the industry during 2001, based on the number of stories devoted to the subject, you would conclude that messaging in all its forms is the dominant interest among developers and providers. This should surprise no one, given the fact that e-mail shows up in virtually every survey of the public as the No. 1 interest in the wireless Web. You could argue that the industry already has found its "killer app" in messaging–but you would be only half-right. Messaging has been and will be the Holy Grail, but it's a moveable feast that is the past, present and future of wireless data.

For the consumer market, and to a lesser extent the enterprise market, I believe multimedia messaging that combines short messaging service,

e-mail, unified messaging, unified communications, voice, graphics, location, presence and availability and—here's where I may get in trouble—video will be the most exciting wireless data application to come along for some years. Forget downloading ring tones or playing interactive games. Wireless is about communicating between people, and multimedia messaging is going to make communications both a pleasure and a valuable tool. Sure, those other things are going to matter, but not to the extent of messaging.

The wireless Internet industry has a bad case of the "tomorrows." We always hear things like "this will take off when networks have the bandwidth to support it." Well, waiting for tomorrow is the kind of business plan that put a number of wireless data companies out of business in 2001. In other words, don't wait for MMS or 3G. Plan for them, build for them, develop them, but use what is possible right now. Otherwise, the wireless Internet will always be tomorrow.

E-mail: bsmith@cahners.com

Editor's Note: Next year, Wireless Internet Magazine takes on a whole new look: It will be bigger – and more frequent. The team at Wireless Week believes in the wireless Internet so much that WIM will become a "super section" within the weekly newsmagazine, running the first and third weeks of every month beginning in January. We'll bring you more features, more market research and more insight into developer tools than ever before. Check it out on Jan. 7, 2002.