It’s Not a Wireless Wonderland Yet
It’s fascinating to see how much much optimism exists for wireless devices to become more than just tools to use to make phone calls, check e-mail and send/receive short messaging through vehicles such as text-messaging and Twittering.
In the eyes of many content, equipment and service providers, the wireless world will soon evolve to the point where it becomes the device for many people to communicate, search, shop, and be entertained. A wireless device will go from being a portable convenience tool to an indispensable part of your everyday life.
The problem is the bullishness is way ahead of the reality. Take mobile advertising, for example. For years, people have been talking about how mobile ads are going to be huge because they will serve a captive audience. But this isn’t happening. According to BusinessWeek, it could be many years before the mobile ad market even comes close to meeting the forecasts of firms such as Gartner and Strategy Analytics, which both have expectations of more than $10-billion by 2011.
This contrasts with Mike Baker, vice-president in change of Nokia’s ad business, who told BusinessWeek that it take at least five years for the industry to surpass $10 billion in annual revenue. “The near-term visibility is cloudy,” he says.
Maybe mobile advertising is one of those concepts with lots of promise that will never materialize. It could be that all those companies chasing the dream of mobile ads could be sadly disappointed.
Technorati Tags: Advertising, Wireless
December 13th, 2007 at 11:37 am
I’m with you on this one. I read an article some days ago that was talking about the evolution of AI and the inclusion of some of the AI advances in the mainstream. The author pointed out the exact same point you are rising. He said that although we use voice recognition software, eye scanners or similar technologies, they’ve all been around for at least 20 to 30 years. And it’s only now that we are seeing them being used by everyone. There is still a big gap between mobile technologies and reality. Most ISP will have to change their game rules if they want this to work. apart from very big investments in new infrastructure, which will be needed to support the increasing demand.
My two cents