The mobile computing revolution is upon us with network carriers
and hardware suppliers playing for the very highest stakes. If your
business wants to be part of the revolution, you've got to make
some technology and process changes. Mike Simons reports
It managers be warned, ignore the mobile computing revolution at
your peril. Get your mobile strategy right and you will realise
substantial productivity increases and open new lines of business.
Get it wrong and you may discover, a few years from now, that you
do not have an organisation at all. The IT and communications
industries have never been prone to understatement. But when it
comes to mobile computing there is hard cash behind the hype.
Expect to see a multitude of new services being pushed at both
business and consumer users in the coming few years.
Europe's leading mobile phone companies spent £22.5bn this
spring to capture the five licences for the third-generation (3G)
mobile spectrum in Britain. The seven-week long, 150-round bidding
war saw some of the industry's most astute leaders head to head in
a high-stakes poker game. The amounts they were prepared to pay to
secure a prime position in the new world of communications stunned
governments and industry observers around the globe.
Professor Nicholas Negroponte, director of the media laboratory
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a leading
technology guru, says that by initiating the auction the
UKGovernment is condemning future generations to a tax on Internet
technology. "What happened in the UK was disastrous," he told a
communications conference last month. The cost of the licences
amounted to $1,000 (£625) per subscriber, in addition to the cost
of providing the service. "That $1,000 has no research behind it,
no new products, no new infrastructure, no new handsets and no new
potential for universal access or making this widely available,"
said Negroponte.
Unsurprisingly, mobile phone giant Nokia disagrees. It predicts
operators will pay back their licence fee within five years of
launching 3G services, largely through the predicted doubling of
revenues per subscriber from new services. This, of course, leaves
one wondering what the payback period would have been, had the
Government not decided to auction the 3G licences.
You don't need to read the tea leaves to forecast the
spectacular growth of mobile computing. Already, it is translating
into vast expenditure on next-generation, low-power chip and
software technologies. For example, the development of Transmeta's
Crusoe chip was backed by Linux king Linus Torvalds and funded by
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allan and billionaire financier George
Soros.
Analyst group Ovum estimates that by 2006 there will be 1.5
billion mobile subscribers globally of which 684 million will be
microbrowser-enabled, using wireless application protocol (Wap) or
other technologies. Analysts at Gartner are working on the
assumption that by 2004 some 40% of mobile workers will need to
carry equipment that offers instant access to voice and hourly
responses to e-mail.
Forrester Research estimates that by this time next year all new
mobile phones sold in the UK will be Wap-enabled and that by 2005
there will be 41 million mobile Internet users in the UK. Systems
integrator Logica believes that by 2002 mobile telecoms operators
will be sending 100 billion short messages a month worldwide, a
predicted 170% increase per year over current levels. Logica
believes the short message service (SMS) will play a key role in
the introduction and diffusion of new mobile technologies like Wap,
General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and 3G.
If the future for mobile computing seems assured, the picture
becomes far hazier when it comes to the technologies that will
underpin the move towards a mobile future.
There is enormous technological uncertainty, typified by the
giant chip producer Texas Instruments, which last month went on an
$8.5bn spending spree, buying up three wireless technology
companies. The aim was to strengthen the company's position across
all the emerging standards. Bob Carl, wireless computing unit
manager for Texas Instruments, says the company aims to offer
choice to customers, rather than try to impose its own standard on
industry. "We want to be standards agnostic," said Carl.
While Texas Instruments is "standards agnostic", IT and
communication managers will face the challenge of having to devise
strategies to cope with suppliers promoting competing solutions
based on mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and
notebook PCs.
Other areas of uncertainty in the mobile computing world include
security and managing staff relations in the new environment.
Security challenges
The security challenges have recently been brought to the
public's attention by the loss of laptops by naval officers and MI5
spies, as well as by the discovery that a former chief of the US
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)had thousands of top secret files
on an insecure PC at his home.
But the issues go much deeper. Managing the workforce as
technology dismantles the office presents its own unique
challenges. There are also other factors that IT professionals
managing the shift to mobile computing must take into account. The
industry is currently struggling to cope with component shortages.
Flash memory chips, which are used in PDAs, mobile phones and MP3
music players are in short supply, forcing Intel to announce a $2bn
investment in flash memory production capacity. Liquid crystal
display screens are even scarcer, with supply problems being blamed
for high mobile PC prices and even the shortage of Nintendo's new
Game Boy.
The UK Government, the European Union and the US Food and Drug
Administration have all recently investigated the health and safety
effects of mobile phone and computing technologies. All have agreed
that there is no increased risk of cancer from using mobile
devices. Nevertheless, the issue is likely to recur among both
workers and local communities.
Mobile computing strategies could also be affected by regulatory
uncertainty as governments try to intervene in imperfect markets
(there is only a limited spectrum in which mobile service providers
can operate). There is the uncertainty caused by the current frenzy
of merger and acquisition activity. These will create a premium for
developing and maintaining skills and ensuring maximum business
flexibility.
Short-term agreements with partners, outsourcing and the use of
application service providers seem certain to grow. But no matter
how dynamic your organisation is and how careful you are, the brave
new world of mobile computing will cause sleepless nights for IT
and communications professionals. The productivity benefits for
your organisation, however, make it likely to mean the gain proves
to be worth the pain.