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With Features Ad Infinitum, Your Cell Phone Getting to Be Like Your PC

Posted on: Monday, 31 October 2005, 21:00 CST

By David Hayes, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Oct. 30--Wireless phones quickly are becoming the Swiss army knife of the 21st century.

Need a camera? Line up the shot and press a button. Want some music? Click on the built-in MP3 player, tune in satellite radio or buy a song online. E-mail? Start typing. Games? Blast away. Want to browse the Web? No problem -- you can even Google it. Need to know where you're going? Fire up the GPS. Watch some TV? Pick your channel.

Camcorder? PDA? Latest news? Stock quotes? Scores? Check, check, check, check and check.

And the list goes on. If you're in a few U.S. cities, you can even use your phone to top off the parking meter before your time expires.

Most of the time, anyway, you also can make a phone call.

"We're kind of at a tipping point between devices that are just considered to be for voice, and having a device always available that you can readily use as your personal computer," said August Grasis, who runs Handmark Inc., a Kansas City wireless software company.

On Monday, Sprint Nextel will make its $1 billion bid to tip the scale even further, launching a high-speed wireless data service dubbed Power Vision, according to sources familiar with the company.

The service offers high-speed Web browsing, an online music store that allows subscribers to buy and download music on the fly, and dozens of other new features.

In recent years, mobile phones have moved from an expensive pay-phone substitute geared toward business executives to a must-have communication device carried by more than 197 million Americans -- about 85 percent of the U.S. population over age 14.

Now a variety of technological factors have come together to allow the wireless industry to turn those pay-phone substitutes into, well, just about anything a software developer can dream up.

Las Vegas drivers are testing parking meters that send text messages to a driver's wireless phone when the meter is about to expire. They top off the meter with their phones, charging the parking tab to a credit card.

New York-based Scanbuy and several other startups are test-marketing software that allows a camera phone user to take a photo of a product bar code while shopping, and get price comparisons from online sites like Amazon.com.

Austin, Texas-based gNumber Inc. in September launched a free service that calls eBay users a few minutes before the end of auctions they're interested in. Bidders then can use an automated voice system to up their bids.

And travel companies, including Orbitz, now call your wireless phone to tell you the status of your flight.

Wireless companies are being flooded by new proposals from software entrepreneurs who want them to install their applications on wireless phones.

"If I had a dollar for everybody who came to me and said, 'Brian, can you put this in there?' well, I couldn't retire, but I could take some nice trips," said Brian Finnerty, handset guru for Sprint Nextel.

To see where we are now in wireless, it probably helps to revisit where we are coming from.

Nine years ago, when Sprint turned on its network for the first time, "a 20-name phone book was pretty hot," Finnerty said.

Services like text messaging and rudimentary Internet access followed quickly. Around 2002, faster microprocessors, more memory and faster Internet access allowed wireless subscribers to start customizing their phones with downloadable ringers and screen savers.

Clips of songs replaced old-fashioned ringers. Photos of family members or friends started replacing the corporate logos that used to dominate wireless phone screens.

Phones quickly went from 600 kilobytes of internal memory to 64 megabytes --enough to hold photos, games and other applications.

Camera phones, camcorders, TV, music and other services became possible.

"It was actually becoming interesting for people," Finnerty said.

At the same time, handsets, which had been getting smaller for years, started to grow because video and other applications require bigger screens.

The future promises to be even more interesting.

While Olathe's Garmin International now offers a navigation application for some Sprint phones that offers users voice-directed turn-by-turn directions, other GPS services are coming soon.

For instance, software developers are working with major wireless companies to offer location-based coupons -- the network, sensing you are driving by an area pizza joint, sends a coupon to your phone offering a $5-off deal. Look for that service sometime in 2006.

Handset manufacturers already are showing off phones with holographic screens that are expected to make mobile gaming and phone photography even more realistic.

Wireless companies have bet billions of dollars building out networks, hoping high-speed services will be interesting enough to lure new subscribers and convince current customers to spend more each month.

So far, the egg has been out in front of the chicken: Consumers generally have remained cautious. Despite early buy-ins, mass-market buyers have stayed away from the incubator.

While consumers spend hundreds of millions of dollars each month on wireless data service, the total is still only a fraction of their total monthly wireless bills.

Sprint last week said wireless data service pushed the average customer's bill up $5.25 a month, to $65, during the third quarter. Verizon and Cingular customers spent about $1 per month less on data service.

The United States continues to lag far behind Asia and Europe, where text messaging, camera phones, video and even pay-by-phone parking meters are old hat. While 1-megapixel or less is the norm for U.S. camera phones, 7-megapixel devices are being tested in Asia.

The U.S. wireless industry will not catch up any time soon, but it may be poised for a technological growth spurt.

After years of relatively slow growth, U.S. wireless subscribers now are sending billions of text messages each month. They are sending millions of photos from their phones. And they are downloading tens of millions of games, screen savers and ringers.

Camera phones, in fact, are among the fastest-growing consumer electronics products in history.

Jeff Hallock, who heads up wireless data strategy for Sprint, said the transition was a natural one.

"Look over the last three years at where consumers have spent their money," Hallock said. "Mobile, DVD, MP3, laptops, cameras. All these things have come together in phones."

The big three wireless companies -- Cingular Wireless, Verizon Wireless and Sprint -- are looking to new high-speed networks to give consumers the option to carry a single device that will do everything they need.

"Mobility is changing the way people live their lives," said Bill Stone, vice president of marketing for Verizon Wireless. "They no longer have to be tethered to their desk phones."

Michelle Mindala, executive director of product management for devices for Cingular, said wireless companies have had to walk something of a tightrope.

While some consumers only want phone service, others want a full menu of services from which to choose.

"We're focusing a lot more on the user experience so people don't feel overwhelmed," she said.

Aaron Kirby, sales manager for Uclick Mobile, an Andrews McMeel Universal company in Kansas City, uses his wireless phone to work more efficiently and to relax when he has a couple of minutes of downtime.

He wants a phone that has a digital camera, PDA, TV service, gaming and a digital music player. And his list goes on.

"Why carry around a phone that just does phone calls when you can have it all in one device?" Kirby asked. "What could make more sense?"

While wireless entertainment --TV on phones, phone-based digital music players, games, downloadable ringers and the like -- gets the most hype, mobile phones with advanced services are becoming a staple for many businesses.

E-mail is the killer mobile application for business.

"A couple of years ago, customers were OK with waiting two to four hours to get a response to an e-mail," said Lee McClelland, who works for Prudential Kansas City Realty.

"Now, if you don't answer in 30 minutes or less, they're gone."

McClelland carries a BlackBerry phone, designed to make e-mail easier, to stay in touch faster.

Other real estate agents carry different phones that act as PDAs and even let them open lockboxes at homes they are planning to show to potential buyers.

At the Johnson County Election Office, officials are investigating whether phones with GPS software could help election officials track and assign field supervisors on Election Day.

Brian Newby, election commissioner, is a former Sprint executive. He uses his phone to compare prices while shopping, and he has used the camera feature while traveling to show product photos to co-workers.

"I use my phone much more for data than for voice," Newby said.

However, for every consumer who has taken a camera phone shot, there are others who do not want all that gadgetry cluttering up their phones.

"I belong to the school that says, 'Enough already,' " said Malcolm Beck of Mission, retired technical director of the Community Blood Center.

"I don't even know half of what's on my phone," said Beck, who wants his devices to be specialized.

"I'd like to have a telephone, and I'd like to have a camera, and I don't want my phone to cook my dinner either."

While some wireless customers would prefer that companies spend more on the quality of the voice network, some sociologists and industry watchers worry about the isolating affects of all these new services.

"I call these new complex wireless phones the Borg of technology -- using a Star Trek allusion -- because they assimilate everything and resistance is futile," said Michael Bugeja, a professor at Iowa State University and author of Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age.

Bugeja's book looks at how technology can contribute to social isolation.

"As cell phones become more complex, with added accessories and functions, we will be communicating less and watching videos or gaming more," Bugeja said.

"Cell phone users with access to streaming videos will be spotted in public places, like zoos or parks, holding their devices and watching music videos, oblivious to life passing them by, alone in self-imposed virtual isolation booths."

NOW PLAYING

More people are using their wireless phones for:

--Taking pictures: Camera phones are great for Web-ready snapshots, and some take higher-quality photos now, too.

--Playing music: MP3 players let new models offer a lot more than ringtones.

--Surfing and e-mailing: Viewing the Web is limited by small screens, but being able to use e-mail on the go is very popular.

--Finding yourself: GPS devices can be built in -- for hikers, real estate agents, anyone who likes to roam.

--Talking: Hey, phones are still phones, too.

WAITING IN THE WINGS

Faster wireless networks will:

--Improve download times for music, videos and Web pages.

--Allow the addition of more interactive features -- even down to feeding a parking meter.

-----

To see more of The Kansas City Star, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.kansascity.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

S, VZ, VOD, BLS, SBC,

Source: The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri)

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