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.