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Gartner Group estimates that there will be 30m handheld computers world wide by 2003 and Dataquest predicts that more than 60% of new Internet access devices will be wireless by 2004. For every consumer PC purchased in Europe, over 4 mobile phones are bought. Forrester Research predicts that more than 219 million people, or one-third of the European population, will access Internet services using mobile phones by 2003. Others are therefore more bullish, estimating that there will be over 1 billion mobile devices world wide by 2004 with over half of them data enabled, and it is likely most of these will conform to the WAP standard.
Most companies that have developed an E-Business strategy based on PCs will need to thing again. If they deal with customers, suppliers, agents, or field representatives who are mobile then they need to quickly update their strategy. Gartner estimates that 40% of consumer e-commerce transactions will be wireless by 2004. Further, by the vary nature of these devices, many users will expect to combine voice and data access within the same transaction, whether it is buying good and services or making a service call. An it is not just mobile phones and PDAs that will be using wireless telecommunications. Developments like Bluetooth will bring very low cost local area networks into the home using wireless technology.
If your company makes home appliances then it is likely that before too long they will have embedded microchips in them and they will be able to communicate with your central systems. Besides maintenance and diagnostics it also allows you to deliver value added services. For example, a microwave manufacture could deliver a daily recipe and offer special deals with a supermarket chain when buying the ingredients via home shopping. A washing machine manufacturer could analyse the water and the type and load of clothes and offer washing powered that is personalised to the customers own particular requirements.
There are opportunities within financial services. An Insurance company could take an electronic claim and send out an engineer before the washing machine flooded the house - and before the customer even knew something was wrong with the machine! Within banking, NatWest has already demonstrated mobile banking using a WAP enabled Orange mobile phone.
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