| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : NOVEMBER 15, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| TECH BUYING GUIDE -- PHONES
But Will It Call My Mother? The new smart phones are nifty--though not yet perfect When Howard Gerson has a meeting he mustn't forget, the chief executive officer of Certified Safety Manufacturing Inc., a maker of first-aid kits in Kansas City, Mo., doesn't ask his secretary for a reminder. Instead, he programs the calendar in his wireless phone to ring him. And when he needs to send an e-mail while waiting to board a plane, he doesn't pull out his laptop PC. He'll zap it from that same bionic gadget--a brand-new NeoPoint 1000 that he bought the first day Sprint PCS sold them. Heck, if he's running late for a flight, he can even check whether the plane is on time by using his phone to call up a travel Web site. ''I can do anything with this phone,'' says a beaming Gerson. ''It's great.'' Wireless companies call these nifty new devices smart phones--digital wonders capable of zapping dollops of Web data to and from the palm of your hand. Loaded with goodies such as a minibrowser that connects to the Internet, the phones will tempt you with e-mail capability, link you to popular Web sites, alert you to an appointment, help you write a to-do list, trade stocks, and lest we forget, handle plain old telephone calls. Sure, carriers are still offering creative pricing on voice calls to lure new customers. But in the age of the New Economy, information is all the rage. Besides, wireless companies are looking for new sources of revenue to supplement voice calls, which will slump 11%--from $42.39 per user this year to $38.77 in 2002, according to Dataquest Inc. Mobile-phone carriers understand that itinerant executives are eager to access e-mail and the Net while they're on the go. And if you consider that the number of Netizens worldwide has climbed to 205 million this year, it's easy to see why carriers are trying to nab you with Web services. ''That's the big driver--Internet penetration,'' says Jane Zweig, executive vice-president at wireless researcher Herschel Shosteck Associates Ltd. in Wheaton, Md. Of course, this isn't the first time we've heard about Web phones. In 1996, AT&T (T) and GTE Corp.(GTE), among others, introduced ''Net phones'' that could snatch news and other data from the Web. The phones used existing cellular technology for voice calls, but something called cellular digital packet data, or CDPD, to handle data calls. Users found the intertwined technologies unreliable in certain regions. At nearly $1,000, the phones were priced out of most people's reach. And the clunky handsets were tough to operate. ''If you were a nerd deluxe, you'd be thrilled,'' admits a GTE spokeswoman. ''But most people are not that way.'' This time around, carriers promise, it's the real deal. Rather than accept their word, I took some of the industry's hottest new handsets for a test drive: the Nokia 8860 from AT&T Wireless Services, the Motorola i1000 Plus from Nextel, the NeoPoint 1000 from Sprint PCS, and a turbocharged StarTac from Motorola called Timeport that should be available from AT&T and Sprint (PCS) this holiday season. Web capabilities have clearly improved, but my cruise through the wireless Web had plenty of bumps along the way. My setup process for Sprint's NeoPoint 1000 was fraught with hassles, calling for some two hours' worth of troubleshooting with Sprint technicians. The e-mail procedure is slow, and connections to the Net often fail. Despite their shortcomings, the new products and services have a few undeniable advantages. None of the phones are bulky. They are all far more affordable than smart phones used to be--ranging from Nextel's $199 to Nokia's $799. And with features such as speaker phones and calendars, they have plenty to attract busy executives. For those eager to dial into the Net from their mobile phone, Sprint PCS has a head start. Dubbed ''Wireless Web,'' its service is accessible via 10 different phones. But clearly the most enticing tool is the NeoPoint 1000. At 6.4 oz. and $399, it's light and affordable. And for road warriors, Sprint offers all-in-one rates starting at $59.99 that bundle loads of local, long-distance, and Web browsing minutes into one plan. While cruising the I-way, I appreciated the NeoPoint's big screen, which features familiar Web words such as home page, bookmarks, and Yahoo. Sprint offers e-mail via a partnership with Yahoo Inc. While a lot of carriers let you send messages from the Yahoo Web site to a cellular phone, Sprint is one of the few that lets subscribers send an e-mail from their phones. And within weeks, Sprint will allow customers to zap e-mail automatically, rather than requiring them to sign in at Yahoo first. To send my first e-mail from my new pocket-size pal, I patiently enter my user name (typing on a tiny phonepad calls for acute dexterity) and wait for a connection. Soon, disappointment hits. ''Web service problem,'' my phone flashes. ''No way,'' wails a Sprint PCS spokeswoman when she learns of the snafu. Yes way. Browsing the Internet via wireless phones isn't nirvana. My Web connection through Sprint failed more often than it succeeded. Sure, it was cool to request a stock quotation or news snippet that struck my fancy. But ordering them up and sending e-mail just take too darn long. At least in your office you can turn to some other activity while the Windows hourglass signals you to be patient and wait. ''How will people react to the slower speed of information and content?'' asks Bryan Prohm, a wireless analyst at Dataquest Inc. ''That's the unknown.'' Jonathan Jackson knows he's not interested. As a partner in a Chicago Anheuser-Busch Co. distributorship, he's a heavy mobile-phone user who just upgraded to Motorola's Net-capable i1000plus. But the son of civil-rights leader Jesse L. Jackson figures Web browsing is best done from the desktop. ''By the time I leave my office computer,'' he says, ''I'm off the Net for good.'' Such skepticism illustrates why carriers are tiptoeing into the wireless Web revolution. Nextel(NXTL), for example, began selling the Web-ready i1000plus last summer but has been slow to offer Internet service, claiming they're still testing it. ''We don't want people to have missed expectations,'' says Michael M. Ozburn, vice-president and general manager of Nextel Online. ''They can use it for e-mail, but we don't want people to think that they can download a huge Power Point presentation.'' HIDDEN COSTS. Nextel expects to offer Web browsing around March. In the meantime, as with most carriers, you can receive news and stock quotations as text pages if you sign up for service at select Web sites such as MailandNews.com and Yahoo. But consider this: Nextel, like other carriers, bills you 10 cents for every page you receive, or $3 a month for 100 pages. So remember to ask how much the Web minutes cost, because the plans can be confusing. As analyst Prohm warns: ''In none of these applications is wireless-data airtime free.'' Still, that's no reason to avoid the i1000plus phone. If this belt buddy were a car, it would be the hottest SUV on the street--practical, yet luxurious and trendy. At $199, it's brimming with features any exec would love. The two to die for? A speaker phone that you can toss on a conference table or car seat and babble away hands-free. The other is a ''walkie-talkie'' that lets up to 100 chat at the touch of a button. ''Where you can have dropped calls with a cell phone, the walkie-talkie is very strong,'' says Jackson, who uses it to reach his 30-odd truck drivers. AT&T is shooting for excellence in its second stab at data phones. Three years ago the nation's biggest wireless carrier, with 11.5 million subscribers, unveiled Net phones that cost up to $1,000. It sold just tens of thousands of units. In June, AT&T started offering Personal News--Web bits such as stock quotations from Bloomberg.com and sports scores from ESPN.com--to about three-quarters of its phones. With most carriers, you have to buy a new handset to browse the Web, but AT&T says its service works on existing phones. ''That's what is great about it,'' says Daniel R. Hesse, CEO of AT&T Wireless Services. Great disappointment, maybe. The personal news items on my phone bored me within hours. You can't select specific news, only broad categories, so you get a flood of stuff. (One headline read: ''Two Disco Fires Erupt in Austria.'' Go figure.) No busy executive needs to pay $4 a month to be interrupted by nagging beeps for info he's not interested in. The only way to stop the barrage is to cancel the service. So if you want news, wait until AT&T's Web-browsing service is released via a new Mitsubishi Corp. phone (possibly by early next year). That way you can control the flow of information by surfing to the Web sites of your choice. FAMILY PLAN. What you don't have to wait for are the most stylish phones in the world. AT&T and its manufacturing partner, Nokia, are determined to nab new users with something other than basic black. The Nokia 8860 is a feathery 4.1 oz. and just a smidgen bigger than a Zippo lighter. Sleek and chrome-plated, it's so fashionable the Italians call it a ''Rolex phone.'' And it's got brains: a calendar, a calculator, and a 250-entry address book. But at $799, it's not for everyone. To reach out and touch users beyond data-hungry business types, AT&T is focusing just as much on new rate plans and phone styles as it is on Web strategies. The carrier now offers phones that have face plates in six colors and Disney characters. Fashion-conscious users can swap them to give the front of the handset a different look. The creativity bug applies to rates, too. Once one person signs up, a ''family plan'' discounts the price for new members and allows unlimited calling within the family and free wireless calls to the house. That's great for consumers right now. But in an increasingly data-dependent world, carriers simply must make good on the promise of faster data speeds. Today, several wireless carriers offer software that lets subscribers use their phone as a wireless modem. The service is useful for, say, checking e-mail at a crowded airline gate. By attaching your phone to a laptop with a short cable, you can log onto the Net when a phone jack is nowhere to be found. The trouble is, at 14.4 kilobits per second, the connection speed is half that of most dial-up modems. In a year, these speeds could reach 56 kbps--and as much as 100 times that by 2004. Sure, the wireless Web has drawbacks, but Kansas City data booster Howard Gerson feels business is too critical to wait. If you don't want to lose ground, it's time to dial the Net. By ROGER O. CROCKETT _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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RELATED ITEMS But Will It Call My Mother? TABLE: Wireless Dials the Web Product Profile: Nokia 8800 PHOTO: Nokia 8800 To See What's in the Pipeline, Look Abroad INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online | |||
