M-commerce is just hype now

NEW DELHI: All the excitement about mobile commerce and the transformation

that it is going to bring about in our lives is nothing but hype. The real

benefits of mobile commerce will accrue to the user only after 2001. This was

the observation made by panelists at a seminar on m-commerce organized by the

students of the Department of Management Studies, IIT, Delhi, and the Global

Institute of Flexible Systems Management (GIFT). The two-day seminar (October

13-14) was aimed at throwing up ideas and generating awareness about the

development trends in m-commerce in the country and on the global arena. The

Department is expected to benefit in terms of getting research ideas and

initiating the process that would take technologies from the laboratory to the

market in collaboration with the private sector.

The speakers included Ericsson CMD Jan Campbell; Citibank, Mobile Internet

head Satish Menon; Integra Micro chairman Mahesh Jain; Marketing & Technical

Solutions director Rohit Chandra and Motorola India chief Sunil Kulkarni.

Dr MP Gupta, coordinator of the seminar, defined m-commerce as "the

ability to interact and transact anything with anyone, anytime, anywhere,

eliminating the barriers of time and space. Mobile phones only scratch the

surface of the limitless world of mobile applications as technologies converge

to have PDAs connected." Although opportunities abound, m-commerce must

overcome its own set of hurdles. Some of the problems highlighted are competing

wireless standards, secure payments, high-speed wireless access, existing

culture and mindsets and privacy issues. Although issues like cultural barriers

will get resolved with exposure to the technology, it will not be possible for

m-commerce to take off without arriving at technology standards, providing a

secure transactional environment and ensuring privacy of users. Besides high

level of mobile penetration and pricing, a roaming structure that encourages

mobile phone culture is a prerequisite for the take-off of m-commerce.

M-commerce is inevitable, as pure voice service of cellular operators will

not be enough to sustain business models. With the advent of broadband

technologies, the experience in the overseas markets has shown that valuation of

pure voice companies has come down and m-commerce has to be facilitated as a

value-added service.

Indian operators have to focus more on marketing the services since the

behavior pattern of consumers in India is no different from that of consumers

the world-over. And Indian consumers are expected to take to m-commerce pretty

happily provided the packaging of the services and promotion are given due

importance.