Le wireless, tout comme les autre aspects de la «Netéconomie», ont soufferts. Tout n'a pourtant pas disparu. Points de vue de professionnels sur la question.

Ce 16 mai, organisé par FirstTuesday Luxembourg, a eu lieu le deuxième Wireless Wednesday. En prévision de cette soirée, paperJam a souhaité faire le point. Pour ce faire, nous avons demandé à deux personnes du panel du Wireless Wednesday de répondre à nos questions. Il s'agit de M. Georges Muller de Cegecom (qui a récemment racheté les activités de Firstmark Luxembourg) et M. Gérard Lopez, Managing Partner chez Mangrove Capital Partners.

What is your company's strategy for "Wireless"? Aggressive, defensive...? What are your optional strategies?

Cegecom: «Cegecom has two different strategies for the Wireless.

Today, we are offering the Wireless Local Loop technology and our goal is to connect a maximum of customers to broadband solutions from 512 KBPS to 2.5 Gbps. Cegecom offers leased lines, IP access, national and international voice

services. We also connect our customers to our state of the art data center offering hosting and housing services.

Cegecom is also applying for an UMTS license. We are more careful regarding this opportunity, as it is very capital intensive. Ultimately, the business plan must make sense.»

Mangrove: «We are patient. Typically, we don't do infrastructure plays, which require a long-term financial commitment (5-10 years), which surpasses the scope of our fund. Since Hardware is also one of the fields that isn't of interest to us, the only remaining field is content, with all the inherent risks towards investing in this space with no clearly defined audience yet, or even penetration timetable. Nevertheless, that's where the interesting returns will lie, that is in the short term.»

Chronologically, which type of companies (content providers, telcos, equipment manufacturer, ...) will first take benefits of wireless data?

C: «Wireless data with reference to the mobile phone is just starting and the evolution is not as expected, if you consider WAP. Japan seems to be the real success story for wireless data.

The technology will improve and so will the content and the number of users. To say who the actual winner will be, is too early today.»

M: «We believe that companies that have put money on the cheaper GPRS infrastructure for instance, will be the first winners of the wireless scene. As far as content is concerned, only few wireless specific players will be interesting, most content will be from existing companies putting a "wireless" flavor to their existing services. Equipment manufacturers will probably see a nice boost in sales, since they are currently in an overall saturated market. Overall I still believe that the bandwidth owners might win this one over time, as they own the hot property, next should be the content providers, and finally the hardware providers.»

When do you think content for broadband will be available?

C: «The content as we have seen it evolves with the availability of capacity. What we understand by big capacities today will be small capacities tomorrow and we will see more and more exciting content.»

M: «Content for broadband is available now, especially in the entertainment arena. We don't see wireless to be a dramatic leap forward in terms of specific content. It will just enable to provide more stuff, quicker, in better quality and targeted more specifically to the end-user. For instance, movies are not a new thing, they are just new to your mobile device, and it is the same for games, financial services, e-commerce and so on.

The industry has seen a brutal shakeout, leaving companies such as AOL-TW consortium, the Kirch Gruppe or EA for games in the driver's seat. We believe that some small players will be able to come through with specific wireless content such as geographic specific services, but these success stories will be rare. In other words no one can expect to get money for a business plan in the financial services area for instance, where the only difference is a wireless approach.»

Until now, what are the big success stories or the best business cases in the wireless data world'

C: «NTT Docomo shows us the way as an operator and Nokia as a producer of handsets. It is amazing to see how well they are doing on such a difficult market.»

M: «The classical one, would be the Japanese NTT Docomo with their I-mode. Other than that, there are some nice valuations going around for serverless communications technologies, for example companies such as Quickcom in Switzerland. I think that serverless (peer to peer) and wireless are a tremendous combination, since it pushes out the infrastructure cost to the client, who not only pays for always better devices, but on top of it rarely uses their capacity to the maximum. Serverless provides this, and with the ability of using always on connectivity, that is one of our megatrends.»

With increasing mobility there are more and more devices, from PC to PDA, mobile phone,? Is there going to be a privileged device in the future?

C: «Everybody has his own idea how the perfect device should look like. Mobility means something else to the business user than to the private customer and so, we will see a full range of products. Small, all in one, unbreakable, soft, flexible and inexpensive, this could be the device of the future.»

M: «Again here I think that the best device is a portable device that marries small size with a good screen visibility and an adequate weight. Mobile phones are too small, portable PCs to big, thus the best device is a mixture which turns out to be about the size of a PDA. Chipsets and circuit boards have evolved to the extent where even PDAs can run a full-fledged OS, as well as provide very adequate multimedia capacities and decent storage space. This will provide a nice market to the chip manufacturers.»

VC, telcos, service providers, equipment manufacturers, ... are sensitive to wireless.  Are they all going at the same pace towards wireless or is there any reluctance?

C: «Who is not interested in wireless? It is an exciting technology. In order to make a business succeed, you cannot afford to loose money in the long run. Yes, wireless is a great solution; but not at any cost.»

M: «There is no reluctance per say, there are different budgets and strategies, but nobody doubts that wireless is the way to go to reach the potential customer at the right moment and the right place (anyone say "impulse buying"). The companies that have invested heavily into UMTS licenses, will have to start providing revenues fairly quickly, thus their need for financing the development of specific services, which is an additional investment. The other, especially those with GPRS investments can take a more relaxed route, waiting for third parties to propose their own services.

To finish: overall wireless will be a way to get customers to do more of the things that they already do today, but so is convergence. The winners will be those that manage to get this equation right; to us they are existing media, telecom and industrial groups. For a newcomer, which represents nearly 100% of the companies we look at, we don't see a lot of open space in the wireless world, outside of companies providing ground breaking technical solutions (such as serverless, security, compression, gps or network management technology). In our eyes, the days of the Portal / On-line community entrepreneur with no technological entry barrier are counted.»

Annexes:

1. Et si l'i-mode débarquait en Europe?

NTT-Docomo, l'opérateur nippon, a bâti son succès sur l'i-mode. Uniquement disponible dans l'archipel, plusieurs signes annoncent son arrivée en Europe.

«Docomo, qui est actionnaire de l'opérateur hollandais KPN Mobile, s'apprête à transposer son réseau à succès i-mode sur le marché européen. S'il ne s'agit pas véritablement de tisser un nouveau réseau de téléphonie mobile, Docomo entend faire valoir son savoir faire en matière de gestion de contenu évolutif sur l'Internet mobile. L'opérateur devrait donc, avec ses partenaires, déployer des serveurs hébergeant des passerelles vers des contenus i-mode. Il envisagerait même de faire fabriquer pour les pays concernés des téléphones mobiles compatibles avec ces nouveaux services.

Le développement dans le reste de l'Europe suivra, en fonction des accords qui seront signés avec les différents opérateurs du marché. Mais Docomo ne compte pas s'en tenir uniquement au vieux continent. Des contrées asiatiques telles que la Corée, Taiwan et Hong Kong sont visées, ainsi que les États-Unis par le biais d'AT&T, l'opérateur américain dans lequel l'entreprise japonaise a investi. La bataille est donc lancée entre l'opérateur britannique Vodafone et son concurrent japonais. Vodafone, le leader mondial de la téléphonie mobile (notamment actionnaire de J-Phone, le rival de Docomo au Japon, et de SFR en France) envisage de lancer son service d'Internet mobile GPRS dans la quasi totalité de l'Europe d'ici au mois de juin. Le match s'annonce serré entre le modèle européen et l'Internet mobile à l'i-mode nippone.» 

Source : www.transfert.net

2. Quick Com Company

Overview

Quick Com is a privately held company based in Zug, Switzerland, with subsidiaries in the USA (New York), Canada (Ottawa) and Italy (Milan). We have an experienced and growing international team, expert in Telecommunications, Broadband and media service development. We are the leading provider of serverless Personal and Group Business Communication solutions with a Guaranteed Quality of Service (GQoS).

Especially adapted to the needs of professional groups, Quick Com's unique serverless technology dispenses with risky, archaic client/server infrastructure and enables secure, cost-effective "any-to-many" data transactions and group networking over IP networks.

Quick Com joins forces with telecommunications carriers, ISPs and technology and integration companies to provide serverless business communications software products for SMEs and other closed groups such as professional organizations, associations and government departments.

From one person SoHo operations to large international organizations, Quick Com's affordable products and services enable businesses to network their sites internationally, to exchange high volume rich media files and to manage professional communities more securely and efficiently than ever before. «

Source: www.quickcom.com

3. What is Nokia?

«Nokia consists of Nokia Networks and Nokia Mobile Phones.

Nokia Networks: We're helping create a mobile world - one where everyone will have access to information on the net. Nokia is a front runner when it comes to supplying data, video and voice networks and related services for our operator customers and Internet Service Providers. We are a leading developer of mobile Internet applications and solutions with an aim to be a pioneering partner in the era of mobile Internet and mobile multimedia.

Nokia Mobile Phones: Quite simply, the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer. We design our technology around human needs. Our mission is to make it easy for people to connect with each other - and to a range of information, entertainment and other wireless services - at any time, wherever they are.»  «

Source: www.nokia.com