Fw: [webwatch] NYTimes.com Article: The New Wireless Web

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The New Wireless Web
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/28/technology/28WEBB.html

September 28, 2000

By IAN AUSTEN

ONE night this summer, Robert Smith was in a bar debating the name of
an obscure supporting actress in an equally obscure John Wayne
film. It was his telephone that finally settled the discussion.

  Mr. Smith, however, didn't call anyone. Instead, using a
minibrowser on his Samsung digital cell phone, he poked around the
Web for about five minutes before finally uncovering the answer. "I
was amazed I could pull that off," he said later, "especially since
I had $5 riding on the outcome."

  But winning bar bets is low on the list of things that persuaded
Mr. Smith to get wireless Web access. (About two months later, he
couldn't even remember the name of the actress or the film involved
in the bet.) Mr. Smith, a regional manager for a company that
insures renters of everything from party tents to portable toilets,
began using the wireless Web 11 months ago to tap into a Web-based
database of his 1,200 clients without having to use a laptop
computer.

  Media Metrix estimates that nearly 7.4 million households in the
United States now have devices like cell phones, pagers and
personal digital assistants that can pluck data from the airwaves.
And although there are no reliable overall figures, people in the
industry say that only a small percentage of users with Web-ready
devices actually exploit that feature. Only 200,000 of Sprint PCS's
customers have signed up for Web service. Similarly, AT&T Wireless
estimates that just 100,000 of its subscribers tap into the
wireless Web.

  Those who do explore the wireless Web are discovering that it is a
very different world from the Web they reach on desktop and laptop
computers. The content now available on the wireless Web   mostly
stock quotes, sports scores and weather forecasts   is served up in
basic text menus with a minimum of graphics and fanfare. In some
ways, it is almost the opposite of the all- singing, all-dancing
wired Web.

  "In focus groups, people say that they want full Web browsing, and
that's the one thing we can't deliver," said Michael Mace, chief
competitive officer at Palm Inc. "We need to let people know that
wireless is not like using a PC. When people who don't know that
get there and try to browse, they say, `What is this garbage?' "

  But some others, like Mr. Smith, are even beginning to prefer the
wireless version. He likens using his sleek, state-of-the-art
Samsung phone to his early days of personal computing, when he was
a proud owner of a boxy Kaypro.

  "What I find on the Web is too much junk," Mr. Smith said. "Logos
and graphics don't thrill me   content does. But the wireless Web
is like it was in the old days when we were tapping into bulletin
boards with a 300- baud modem."

  In a narrow sense, Mr. Smith isn't actually on the Web. While
wireless users may think they're viewing the World Wide Web, many
wireless providers in the United States, including AT&T, limit
their customers to special pages stored on closed servers. Some
people in the wireless Web business predict the Web will become
increasingly divided into two streams, wired and wireless.

  "The Web is going to become highly segmented," said Andrew
Sukawaty, the former president of Sprint PCS, the wireless company
that counts Mr. Smith among its customers. "You're going to see
specialized pages for specialized needs"

  Exactly what Americans are doing on the wireless Web and what it
may look like in five years remain something of a mystery. For
starters, none of the major Net ratings companies has started
tracking wireless Web use. And Bruce Ryon, vice president of Media
Metrix's new-media group, which is developing such a measurement
system, said that the widespread use of the wireless Web in Asia
and Europe does not offer a model of what is likely to happen in
the United States. In Europe, for example, online wireless games
are popular. In Japan, there is a Web-based version of karaoke.

  American customers are not likely to be singing karaoke into their
cell phones anytime soon. The biggest difference is cost. As with
traditional phone service, there is a bewildering array of options
for wireless Web customers, most of them more expensive than those
in Europe or Japan. Sprint PCS, for example, estimates that its
customers pay an average of 25 cents a minute to surf the Web.

  "The thing about Europe and Asia is that there's a whole different
economic model," Mr. Ryon said. "In both places it's very expensive
to be wired to the Web. It can cost hundreds of dollars a month.
But wireless access costs only a few dollars a month. Here, I have
a Web cell phone that I'm paying about $70 a month for, and most
people can get on the wired Internet practically for free." As a
result, Mr. Ryon said, the relative expense of wireless browsing
means that North Americans "will not use it for time killing, like
people in Europe."

  Sprint PCS was the first United States wireless phone service to
offer a practical way onto the Web using handheld gadgets. Most
major wireless companies offer some form of Web service. Typically,
they deliver text-only Web pages written in Handheld Device Mark-up
Language   H.D.M.L.   or Wireless Mark-up Language   W.M.L. In
part, because wireless modems are sluggish   most systems in this
country reach a top speed of only 14.4 kilobits per second
companies like AT&T try to reduce delays by holding pages on closed
servers and by using a series of technology standards known as the
Wireless Application Protocol, or W.A.P.

  The content offered by the wireless Web also pales beside that of
its wired cousin. Fast Web and Transfer, a search engine company,
has indexed 400 million Web pages from the traditional Web in its
main search engine. But its W.A.P. search engine offers only
400,000 pages configured for the wireless Web.

  "This space is so new to all of us that we don't really know what
services people will want on mobile devices," said Deanna Sanford,
lead project manager for the mobile version of Microsoft's MSN Web
portal.

  Mr. Smith is a good example of an early adopter of the wireless
Web. Despite his phone's limitations, he has found a relatively
sophisticated way to use it as he travels. Shortly after getting
his new phone, Mr. Smith downloaded a wide variety of information
about his clients   contact information, policy expiration dates
into a Web-based address book offered by Yahoo.

  "I use it to access my database when I don't have a laptop," he
said, "or during times like when I'm in a restaurant and I don't
want to pull my laptop out and wait for it to boot up."

  One thing Mr. Smith does not do, however, is stray outside of the
roughly 40 sites offered by Sprint's wireless menu. Looking at
pages not rewritten for Web phones usually involves scrolling
through several screens containing only the text for the various
navigation buttons and bars that surround the actual contents of a
page when it is viewed on a personal computer.

  W.A.P. and its special standards are not the only answer to that
problem. Palm Inc. and others stick with traditional Web technical
standards by using scraping or clipping software that tries to lift
out only the most important text on a page. Other wireless-site
developers are looking to create material aimed only at the
wireless market. Lee Hancock, chief executive and chairman of Go2
Online, a Web-based business directory, said the company is
altering and limiting the material it sends through its wireless
Web service. "You might not be looking for a plumber from your cell
phone, but you might be looking for a hotel," he said.

  Go2 also hopes to take advantage of technology that will indicate
future cell phones' physical locations (a feature that all phones
sold in the United States after Oct. 1, 2001, must contain by law
to aid 911 emergency operators) to automatically sort wireless Web
pages. With that, the service would be able to deliver information
on, say, restaurants in the immediate vicinity of the user.

  To no one's surprise, many companies are hoping that the wireless
Web will become part of the world of e-commerce. The wireless Web
versions of online stores like Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com
are already being touted as comparison-shopping tools. The theory
is that shoppers will pause in store aisles to check online prices
before heading to the checkout.

  Mr. Ryon, at Media Metrix, has his doubts about the plan. "I just
kind of roll my eyes when it comes up at conferences," he said. But
he also said that future generations of Web-enabled phones might
become part of another big Internet trend: downloadable music.

  As Web-enabled phones improve, Mr. Hancock said he expects that
many users may even leave behind the wired Web, with its slow
downloads and overwhelming multimedia features, just as many cell
phone users have abadoned their land lines.

  "There is a very good chance that in many cases the wireless
device becomes the primary entrance to the Web," Mr. Hancock said.
"But it will be very different than the Web as we now know it.
We'll have to create a user experience I don't believe can be met
by wired access."

Received on Thursday, 28 September 2000 21:00:14 UTC