It has a colour screen, understands your voice, and has 24-hour access to the Internet. The market for mobile commerce is set to explode as people use their handsets to do anything from booking a movie ticket or checking the headlines to paying bills or ordering groceries Get set for a new era in mobile communications. Sophisticated technology that will be introduced this year will turn cellphones from devices for simple voice communication into powerful mobile computers, permanently connected to the Internet. On the back of these developments, the market for mobile commerce is set to explode as people use their handsets to do anything from booking a movie ticket or checking the latest headlines to paying bills or ordering groceries. On the business front, the new technology will allow employees to be permanently connected to the company network from anywhere in the world.
Mobility is something people are getting used to.
There are now around eight million cellphone users in South Africa, significantly more than fixed-line users. However, the principal means of connecting to the Internet is still the tethered PC, the computer in the office or the home which is hard-wired into the network. Hand-held computers and personal digital assistants have been left out of the loop too, mainly because until now they have been little more than electronic replacements for paper diaries and organisers. Data transfer rates over existing networks were far too slow to get anything meaningful done on the Internet from a cellphone. Now analysts say 2001 is the year of mobile commerce and WAP, spurred on by the high data speeds GPRS offers.