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Wireless Revelers Stage Their Own Mardi Gras
 Technology: At trade show in New Orleans, mood is
celebratory as computer industry rubs elbows with makers of Net-linked
portable devices.
By ELIZABETH DOUGLASS, Times
Staff Writer
NEW
ORLEANS--If the economy, and the nation as a whole, is suffering
from "irrational exuberance," then surely this city, this week, is ground
zero.
Mardi Gras revelry fills the
streets of the famous French Quarter, and inside the New Orleans
convention center is the suit-and-tie equivalent: a massive trade show for
the hot-hot wireless communications industry.
But the exuberance pulsing through the
Cellular Telecommunications Industry Assn.'s annual confab is mostly
justified.
That's because the world has
discovered that wireless portable devices--phones and hand-held
mini-computers--represent a crucial new way to deliver the Internet and a
host of customized information services to on-the-go consumers. These
days, consumers are subscribing in record numbers, stock prices of
wireless businesses are soaring, and industry deals and alliances are
being struck daily.
So technology's
luminaries have been drawn here, with a first-time keynote speech on
Monday from Microsoft's Bill Gates and major appearances throughout the
three-day trade show by top executives from Sun Microsystems, Compaq
Computer, Amazon.com, America Online and others from the computer world.
In fact, companies like Microsoft and
others can ill afford to miss out on the wireless phone market, which is
expected to have 1 billion customers by 2002, up from 450 million at the
end of 1999. And more mobile phones are produced and sold worldwide each
year than personal computers and cars combined.
"People used to discount [wireless phone
Web access] because of the slow speed and because of the small screen
size," said Andrew Sukawaty, president of Sprint PCS, the first U.S.
carrier to launch a nationwide wireless Internet service for consumers.
"Then [the computer industry] woke up to the fact that people are more
likely to use one of these devices to look for information than they are
likely to be at their PC."
That
realization spurred MCI WorldCom's pending deal to buy Sprint to get its
fast-growing wireless unit, and has been the motivation behind mega
mergers involving Britain's Vodafone AirTouch and investments by Microsoft
in various wireless entities.
Wall
Street has taken notice, too, as evidenced by a string of major initial
public offerings from the likes of Phone.com, a maker of mini-browsers
used in mobile devices, AT&T's plan to create a tracking stock for its
wireless assets, and the meteoric rise in the stock price of Qualcomm
Inc., the San Diego wireless company.
Many companies at this week's trade show
unveiled vast improvements in technologies such as voice-recognition,
battery life, security and wireless data transmission speeds--all
considered critical to the widespread adoption of wireless phones as a
consumer's do-everything device.
Meanwhile, crowds of conventioneers
ogled and tested the sleek and feature-packed phones shown by industry
leaders Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola as well from LG InfoComm and
newcomers such as San Diego-based NeoPoint.
Samsung Electronics unveiled new U.S.
phones with Spanish-language text and voice prompts as well as the first
U.S. mobile phone to include built-in MP3 technology, which will allow
users to download and play music from the Internet.
And mobile carriers such as AT&T
Wireless, BellSouth and Vodafone AirTouch are racing to add features and
content that will help make their products indispensable--a development
that mirrors a similar rush for content in the early days of the Web.
On Tuesday in New Orleans, Samsung
announced a deal that will give Yahoo space on its Internet-ready mobile
phones, and Bell Atlantic teamed up with Amazon.com in a similar deal. IBM
unveiled software that it said would make it easier to convert information
from existing Web sites for use on the small wireless phone screens.
And in a new spin on
advertiser-supported services, Culver City-based DSI Technology's
Totallyfreepaging.com unit struck a deal with Microsoft to allow pager
customers to receive free customized news and financial alerts as well as
e-mail from the software firm's MSN Hotmail service.
The service is for local usage and not
unlimited, and is provided free in exchange for demographic information
that helps the company target ads.
The trend at the heart
of the action, the convergence of the Internet and wireless hand-held
devices, will make the mobile world "the defining industry of this
century," said John Zeglis, head of AT&T's wireless group.
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