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DQI Bureau
New Update

In the late nineties analysts predicted the latent potential of mobile and

wireless applications market.

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Forrester Research estimated the wireless software market size to reach $ 90

billion by 2003. When handhelds were expected to overtake PCs as computing and

access devices many companies like Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and CA rushed into

building applications for mobile devices. Web portals, wireless LANs and spread

of CDMA and GSM-based mobile telephone networks lured the mobile and wireless

software market segment.

However a reality check revealed that this market did not take-off as

predicted. Non-affordability of handheld computing devices was one of the

reasons. Disparity of standards in mobile networks, the 2.5G v/s 3G debate and

non-availability of applications were other reasons. Clearly, the opportunity

and the trends in this segment were over-hyped. The mobile and wireless software

market had not been defined distinctly. Mobile software and wireless software

are entirely separate domains. According to Gartner, "it is a collection of

fragmented markets, each with its own players, target buyers and rules, still

full of fast-moving opportunities for large and small".

The applications varied from a stand-alone software to navigate the menus of

a mobile handset, a PDA calendar to e-mail connectivity software or sales force

automation software on a PDA to connect to an ERP backbone. To lessen the

complexity, wireless applications are broadly categorized into three. Mobile

applications that run on PDAs, cellphones and specialized devices like

intelligent barcode scanners and can stay online or offline as desired. Wireless

applications run over wireless networks like infrared, wireless LAN, Bluetooth

or a GSM/ CDMA-based cellular network. And wireless Internet applications are

characterized by a microbrowser on a PDA or a smart-phone that is always

connected to the Internet. Business applications that run on PDAs and similar

specialized devices are one of the oldest and still demand high investments. In

India the trend is fast emerging in industries like pharma, FMCG and insurance.

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Mobile

and Wireless Applications

Type

of usage

Application

Example

Market

Prospects
Personal Personal

Information Manager, Scheduler,One-player games
Hot
Consumer-to-consumer

(C2C)
SMS

chat, IM, two-player games
Hot
Business-to-consumer

(B2C)
Airline

check-in, Retail Banking, Stock-trading
Cold
Business-to-employee

(B2E)
Sales

automation, field service, healthcare, law

enforcement, logistics and inventory
Hot
Business-to-business

( B2B)
Same

as in B2E but with enhanced securitycontrol for business between

organizations.
Cold

Mumbai-based Lauren Software, part of the Rs 20 crore Lauren Infotech,

develops applications for PDAs. Says Sushant Pandya, director, Lauren Software,

" I see three opportunity areas--standard software for mobile devices like

cellphones, PDAs and specialized devices with features like calendar, mail and

information manager. There are no applications written in this case. In the

second case, applications are written in C++, Java and Code Warrior and run

independently on the PDA. The third is an enterprise solution on the PDA. The

latter application acts as a conduit to the back-end, say Java interfaces to the

back-end database. Lauren develops enterprise and independent PDA applications.

Lauren pioneered a few PDA applications that are currently in use by DHL,

Airfreight and Colgate Palmolive. The technical challenge is in building

applications that could connect to back-end enterprise applications. As the

software footprint for PDAs are typically very small they are therefore tightly

coded. A PalmOS occupies 100 KB of space while the Palm DB2 engine and the DB2 E

7.2 EveryPlace about 180 KB. The Indian market for mobile and wireless software

is virtually non-existent. In terms of business potential, the PDA applications

market size is smaller as compared to the business applications market. As PDA

applications bring in low revenues, to the tune Rs 4 lakh or so, they fall below

the purview of many large software companies. In addition, developers

specializing in wireless technologies are scarcely available. Scaling operations

will make the segment attractive in terms of business potential. Says Pandya,

" The key is to help companies see the competitive advantage. Once a

company enters the segment, others are bound to follow".

Easwaradas Satyan in Mumbai

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