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23rd April 2004 - The wireless data market has been
stifled for many years by slow data speeds, spotty geographic
coverage and high price. However, according to In-Stat/MDR,
faster wireless data services, enabled by next-generation
CDMA 1xRTT EVDO and EVDV, as well as UMTS, are all coming
into play from various providers and will be available,
at least in a limited way, by the end of this year.
A recent survey of the high-tech market research firm's
wireless panel indicates that about 20% of respondents
currently use Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) data
services, and an additional 37% either plan to begin
using these services within the next six to 12 months
or at some point in the future.
A wide variety of devices are now available to access
these services, and more applications are coming to
market that can take advantage of high speed (including
imaging and video). However, at the end of the day,
In-Stat/MDR's survey indicates that this market's future
will come down to price. As the carriers make these
prices more attractive, the more rapidly adoption will
occur. Service providers must work to determine the
inflection point at which price is low enough for rapid
adoption that will still allow them to recoup and exceed
investments in the infrastructure they deployed to make
these services available.
Down the line, these services will, to some degree,
displace both wireless public WLAN (hotspot) and wireline
cable modem and DSL services. The amount of displacement
will depend on various factors, including the ability
to share high-speed service within a household, price
(which, if low enough, may somewhat negate the importance
of a shared network) and coverage. Since the high initial
price of high-speed WWAN data services will make them
affordable primarily to business users only, In-Stat/MDR
believes that all of these services will continue to
co-exist for many years to come.
In-Stat/MDR has also found that:
- Laptops are more often becoming the access devices
of choice for WWAN data services. Camera phones are
also rapidly gaining in popularity.
- About one in three respondents to In-Stat/MDR's
survey state that speed will be an important factor
in their selection of a WWAN data service provider.
- The applications that are most frequently accessed
by people who use wireless data services for personal
reasons are for communications and Personal Information
Management (PIM) purposes: e-mail, address books/calendars,
text messaging and chat. Future users plan to use
these same applications most often. The study shows
moderate interest in a variety of imaging and video
applications.
- About half of the survey respondents indicated that
the ability to purchase both public WLAN (hotspot)
and WWAN data service together is very important.
This Market Alert is drawn from the In-Stat/MDR report,
"Demand
for Wireless High-speed Data Services and Applications",
which highlights results from a recent survey of In-Stat/MDR's
wireless panel regarding WWAN data service. The report
aims to address the issues that carriers must now grapple
with, such as the price that users will pay to access
these services, whether they will use them as a replacement
to hotspot (public wireless LAN) and/or wireline data
services such as cable and DSL, what the driving applications
are (from both a business and consumer perspective),
and which types of devices they will use to access these
services.
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