Predicting whether new technology will succeed or fail is not easy. Be honest, and ask yourself whether you really foresaw the calculator, the internet, the mobile phone or the compact disc shaping modern life as profoundly as they have. Equally, I’ll be the first to hold my hands up and admit to losing a hefty wager, betting against the demise of the Betamax VCR, the tamagochi ‘cyber-pet’, the Sinclair C5 car and the Remington Fuzz-Away – technological miracles that, at one stage, we thought we’d never live without.
The 21st century is throwing up its own welter of whizz-bang possibilities and, while some will go the way of the DeLorean sports car and the strangely pointless Robot Dog, a few will surely be around for the long term.
Telecom technology is predictably offering a surfeit of hype-laden technological wonders, and these developments are rolling out new potential avenues of corporate communication. Foremost among these is Wireless Application Protocol(Wap) and Short Message Service (SMS).
For the uninitiated, Wap is internet access on your mobile phone, a function that enables on-the-go investors to keep abreast of market movements. Essentially, since digital phones convert a voice to bits and bytes, it’s just as easy for the phone to send data as it is to send voice. Add to this the internet and you have Wap. But the jury is still out as to whether it’ll fly or flop.
At present, each phone has its own software for surfing the web (known as a mini-browser) and some sites will not work with certain phones (although this problem should eventually be resolved). Other drawbacks to Wap include the high cost of calls when roaming out of your service provider’s coverage area.
Wap is still in its infancy. The phones that came out this year will, in Wap terms, be seen as relics in two or three years time. Larger screens, color displays and faster speeds all await. A year ago, mobile phone groups were predicting that in two years’ time, there would be more Wap use than conventional internet use. However, Wap appears to be off to a slow start and the chances are they’ll be proved wrong. That said, industry experts predict that, within a year, most mobiles on the shelf will be Wap-enabled.
Do Wap?
Regardless of the efficacy of Wap technology, some companies are making it part of their IR to appear at the cutting edge of corporate communications. One such firm is Denmark-based provider of network communications, i-data International (see i-datac.com/Wap). Yet while it provides a share price Wap service, the company’s public relations manager, Jakob Faarrang, admits the move isn’t in response to overwhelming demand from investors. The actual reason? ‘We’re a technology company so it doesn’t hurt to show off a bit,’ he says. ‘The Wap section of our web site is not the most popular part. It’s more of a publicity device.’ So how many people are using it? ‘Well, let’s just say it isn’t the most popular part of our site,’ he says.
That is a motive shared by other technology firms. Gresham Computing, a firm based in Southampton in the UK, also offers investors Wap sites carrying share price information. And, again, a company spokesman, Paul Harris, concedes that there is an ulterior motive to the IR push. ‘We employ it to demonstrate the technology that we’ve got, rather than to inform the investor,’ he says.
Faarrang does think that Wap-based IR will soon be at the cutting edge of corporate communications. ‘I still think that it’ll get there as the speed comes,’ he says, ‘but it hasn’t hit the big time just yet.’ He points to Japan where the technology for mobile phone internet access is streets ahead of the west.
‘NTT DoCoMo in Japan is leading the way,’ says Faarrang. ‘Its alternative to Wap [i-mode] already has color screens and you can get handsets shaped like teddy bears – they aim the product at young people and it’s very popular. It’s not Wap – it’s more advanced.’
Bring it on
Finnish communications group Elisa is one company that is clearly striving to develop this channel of communication. Its Alert-Service – available to users of its mobile network, Radiolinja, on wap.elisa.fi – gives out more than simple share price information. Investors receive an alert when Elisa’s stock price goes under or exceeds the limit defined by the investor. One can also monitor Elisa’s market capitalization and find out its closing rate, stock exchange releases and basic stock price info.
To an extent, listed companies are a little behind the game because, as with the rest of the internet, it is the integration of services that marks the future of Wap. An example of this is the Swiss bank UBS (www.ubs.com). It offers integrated quotes on world markets, foreign exchange, intraday and three-month charts, portfolio management, share dealing and e-banking via Wap.
And it isn’t alone. Web sites abound that provide information on US equity prices (www.123jump.com/Wap), UK equity quotes (www.mobile-invest.co.uk), as well as intra-day charts from European markets (wap.belcast.be:80/index.wml#home), and quotes from markets in the Asia-Pacific region (wap.idsfinance.com). Readers without Wap phones might like to point their browsers toward www.gelon.net/, a site which allows users to view Wap sites through a normal net connection.
Sending out an SMS
In addition to a standard Wap service, many companies are also turning to SMS communication. The UBS site offers an SMS portfolio alert service to just about any digital mobile phone, Wap enabled or not, anywhere, anytime. The investor defines a portfolio of shares on the UBS website using a normal internet connection, and when their limit is hit, the UBS system sends up to two e-mail messages and one SMS to any mobile phone in the world.
Mind you, SMS isn’t necessarily the poor man’s Wap. Obviously, one can’t browse the internet on a standard mobile phone but SMS does have its advantages. For example, if the mobile phone is off or out of range at the time, the investor’s home SMS centre keeps sending the message until the phone acknowledges its receipt. This is advantageous in that Wap access can be very expensive when travelling in foreign parts.
That leads onto Wap’s other main flaw which is that, unlike SMS, one has to dial up to it. SMS, on the other hand, pages you – text messaging somehow escaped the high price tag most service providers attach to mobile phone services, and is not Wap related. As there is no charge for text message reception, an SMS alert service is probably the best solution for the traveler. Moreover, the public loves SMS. In the UK alone, almost 1 bn text messages are being sent every month.
With that in mind, i-data International combines both Wap and SMS services. ‘We send a daily e-mail or SMS which provides information on the latest trade, volumes and the high and low,’ says Faarrang. Conduit plc, a Dublin-based telco, is another firm to adopt SMS shareholder communications. It launched its SMS share price alert service nearly a year ago and while it doesn’t push information out to users when limits are reached, it is cheap, quick and easy. A user just needs to send a text message, simply saying ‘share’. Seconds later a message is returned via SMS, detailing the last trade, the net change, the bid and ask price as well as the previous close. The SMS request for this service is charged at the normal rate by the user’s network provider. And there is no charge to receive the SMS share message.
Predictably, high-tech firms are leading the way in this new strand of corporate communications. But whether or not old economy firms will catch the Wap and SMS bug remains to be seen. After all, their products and services aren’t being advertised through Wap or SMS IR in the same way that these TMT companies’ are.
For that reason, I shan’t be making any bets on the future success of these two media just yet. After all I still have this Betamax VCR I can’t get rid of.
