I racn arcoss a very interesting article, Numbers in the Sky, dated October 2000.
It's interesting how m-commerce could not take off during the 1998-2001 period. There were a number of startups that came up with interesting ideas around m-commerce. Big players such as Verizon tried to push the concept. But at the end of the day, the adoption rate was very low and it did not take off. Very similar to what happened to VoIP.
Some things have changed since then, and some have not. People are more comfortable with technology. E-commerce has become a daily part of the life of a lot of people. So m-commerce sounds natural.
At the same time, people are still uncomfortable using a browser on a cell phone, at least here in the US. Far East and Europe are by far ahead of the US, which shows itself in the usage of SMS and MMS services too.
That is why we think voice is the most reliable path to beging m-commerce. SMS comes next and people will be ok with it pretty soon. WAP? I don't know. It happens that from a technology standpoint, we already support WAP through our DashPhone product line, but when it comes to the average consumer using a cell phone, it's still a foreign concept, and will be so for quite some time.
However, it's very interesting that in the article I mentioned, mobile comparison shopping is named is one of the initial movers of m-commerce. Right on!
Posted by nasser at April 8, 2006 09:29 PM