Wireless Wave - Spring 2008 - (Page 21)

Choosing opportunities With so many intriguing m-commerce possibilities, how do wireless carriers determine what services to offer and when to introduce them? “Customer need and market opportunity would always be the first drivers for us,” says Daniels. “It really comes down to how many customers want the service, are demanding the service, and are willing to pay for the service.” “We focus on products that we feel will work well for our customers and that our customers will feel excited about and would sign up and use,” says Richmond. “The products that we’re picking are all typically easy for the end user to use.” Wireless customers who use mobile banking or who have participated in m-commerce trial report have responded favorably to their first taste of m-commerce. Many say that they enjoy its convenience and would further like the ability to use their phone as an “electronic wallet” where all their purchasing, membership and merchant cards are stored. “When I surveyed people for my report I asked them how interested they would be in using their cell phone as a loyalty card in addition to a transaction card. There was actually far more interest in the loyalty card—43 percent saying they were very interested—compared with 30 percent for the transaction card,” says Chamberlain. Customers may also like the added layer of security that comes with storing their information on a mobile handset. “If I drop my wallet in a parking lot, the money is gone, the cards are gone, my driver’s license is gone. But if I drop my cell phone, I could call my operator or maybe call my own number and key in a pin code, and all the financial stuff is disabled. It’s more secure than what I’ve got in my leather wallet,” Chamberlain says. Breaking down the barriers to adoption Several factors could slow the introduction of additional m-commerce services in the U.S. “Consumers have expressed a desire to have and use these services but unfortunately the ecosystem is not in place at this time to commercially deploy them,” says White. “In order to drive adoption, it will be incumbent on wireless operators to work together on defining and adopting technology and policy standards. This will reduce the cost and technology burden for banks, merchants and other ecosystem players to support these new products and services.” Chamberlain believes the industry has made progress in this regard, citing as an example the recent adoption of standards for near field communications (NFC) technology. “Having that standard means everybody can start manufacturing, knowing that it’s all going to work alike,” he says. There are financial issues as well. “The current paradigm for payments does not hold a place for entities like the wireless operator,” White says. “So for us to get into the business, make the investments, and receive a return on those investments, we have to find a revenue stream. The challenge is that in the current ecosystem, the merchants have little to no “If customers have a bad experience—if the carrier allows a certain content provider to serve content to its subscribers and the content provider delivers a bad service—that could be a poor reflection on the operator. So that is always prevalent in carriers’ thinking.” Scott Nichols Ericsson Technologies provide many routes to m-commerce Wireless carriers will use a variety of technologies to provide their customers with m-commerce services. The most familiar today are SMS and MMS, which are driven by short codes, and used as marketing avenues by companies for such products as ring tones, wallpapers, and games The use of WAP could improve that customer experience, according to Scott Nichols, director of IPX at Ericsson. “A WAP billing purchase is more like a web purchase than a traditional SMS mobile purchase,” he says. In a typical mobile purchase scenerio, customers look at a piece of content on a WAP storefront, then break the session to go to an SMS client and open up an SMS messaging session, then use a short code going back and forth to purchase goods. With WAP, on the other hand, all of the purchase dialog, the call to action and the confirmation of the purchase can happen within the WAP session. 21 Spr i ng 20 0 8

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Wireless Wave - Spring 2008

Wireless Wave - Spring 2008 Contents A Letter from Our Chairman A Letter from Our President Pryor Approval The Promise of M-commerce Moving Targets Foreign Service Multiple Choice Legs, Regs, and Wireless Wireless News The Supplier’s Voice CTIA Welcomes New Members Index of Advertisers Roaming with….

Wireless Wave - Spring 2008

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