[Forrester] Consumers Don't Want Wireless Web... Yet.

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From: Adam Rifkin -4K (adam@XeNT.ics.uci.edu)
Date: Wed Jul 26 2000 - 14:07:31 PDT


Asked to describe the basis of the company's optimism, Callinan said
simply, "We can't fail."

   http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/152748.html

Clearly a person who doesn't know how to make unfalsifiable statements
that may later make him look bad...

> Consumers Don't Want Wireless Web....Yet
> By Kevin Featherly, Newsbytes
> CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A.,
> 26 Jul 2000, 12:13 PM CST
>
> Despite the industry buzz circulating around the idea of the coming
> wireless Internet, a new Forrester Research report indicates, the North
> American buying public simply doesn't care. But it will, the report
> says, as consumers come to understand what it means to be ubiquitously
> connected.
>
> The report by Forrester analyst Patrick Callinan, "Latent Demand for a
> Wireless Web," suggests that the only factors standing between the US
> and Canadian carriers, and the kind of wireless adoption seen in Europe
> and Asia, are consumer education and the work of determined wireless
> moguls "willing to blast through the indifference."
>
> The report draws on a pair of Forrester technology surveys of nearly
> 10,000 representative North American consumers and households, both
> conducted this year. Relying on their data, the Callinan report asserts
> that, despite the apathy with which many US and Canada residents greet
> the idea of wireless-Web handsets, their disinterest merely shields a
> strong "latent demand" for the technology - demand which the survey
> insists consumers are not yet aware.
>
> "Consumers don't think they want the wireless Web - yet," Callinan
> states in the report. "But they will. Forrester believes that the
> wireless Web can tap into a powerful type of consumer interest. ...
> Wireless Web providers can plot a course for growth."
>
> Asked to describe the basis of the company's optimism, Callinan said
> simply, "We can't fail."
>
> He explained that various Forrester reports issued this year carry the
> same message, that carriers can snare a huge market if they mind their
> wireless p's and q's. "If operators do what we're suggesting," Callinan
> said, "then (wireless) will take off. It has to take off. So the
> operators will do whatever they can to make it work, because they've
> invested so much time and effort and equipment into this. They have to
> do it."
>
> And the report suggests that inroads may already be under construction.
> Forrester's two surveys indicated that 35 percent of households are at
> least willing to entertain the idea of using the wireless Web.
>
> It is among those willing to consider buying into the technology, the
> report says, that the "early adopter" types can be found. These are
> likely to be under 40, college-educated men with better-than-average
> incomes. Two-thirds already are online - 40 percent of them for more
> than two years - and 37 percent of those online have bought something
> there in the past two three years. And about two-thirds of them already
> have cell phones, as opposed to 50 percent of respondents overall.
>
> "Like all early adopters," the report says, "they're willing to try new
> things and see themselves as natural leaders. They say they work long
> hours. But they are also more extroverted and image conscious than
> average - a sign that their Web consumption will be conspicuous."
> Meaning others less prone to "natural leadership" will be watching with
> interest, the report suggest.
>
> The figures suggest that the failure of the North American buying public
> to buy into the wireless Web early is more a matter of consumer
> knowledge and understanding than an outright rejection of the
> technology, Callinan suggests.
>
> "I'm a demand-side analyst," he told Newsbytes. "So all I'm saying (to
> carriers) is you've got a lot of ignorance out there among consumers,
> what are you going to do about it?"
>
> What they ought to do about it, he said, is to fine-tune the services
> they offer. Callinan said that carriers need to begin to focus harder on
> what he called "here-and-now" and "location-based" services, which he
> said will prove to be the among wireless Web's mainstays.
>
> He gave as an example of a location-based service a wireless direction
> finders similar to the Web-based Mapquest.com service that could be
> accessed through a cell phone in the event of a flat tire on a rural
> road. A here-and-now service would include something like a telephone
> directory that would allow someone stranded in such a situation to make
> an immediate phone call to the appropriate number for assistance.
>
> Those examples illustrate why Forrester projects that cell phones,
> rather than the more function-packed personal digital assistants like
> Palm Pilots, will eventually achieve dominance over the wireless Web. By
> 2005, Forrester projects, cell phones will account for 80 percent of the
> wireless Web market, while PDAs will total just 10 percent of the
> market, with other devices following.
>
> Then there is the issue of price.
>
> "If there is one piece of advice that I'd give to the mobile operators,
> developing the revenue streams that are available to you from the mobile
> Internet or mobile data in general will require that you stop milking
> the early-adopter consumers," Callinan said. "In other words charging
> them a premium price simply because they were first to market. Instead,
> (carriers) should go for penetration pricing, where you bring the prices
> as low as you can bear in order to get the volume in order to train the
> consumers to use their handsets for more than just voice.
>
> "If they do that," he said, "then they can gradually get more data
> minutes from consumers. So they'll make it back by increased use of
> minutes, which they can charge for. And there will probably be some
> advertising revenues."
>
> He said that if carriers get over the humps created by lack of
> appropriate service and confusing pricing structures, then success on
> the wireless Web becomes a simple marketing issue.
>
> "There's nothing wrong with consumers right now," Callinan said. "It's
> latent demand; it hasn't been exposed yet. If (carriers) do what we tell
> them to do ... then all of our predictions will come true."

----
Adam@4K-Associates.Com

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