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The uses of mobile communications have been vividly imagined for a long time. Cartoon character Dick Tracy whispered into his wristwatch radio in the 1930s. Television’s Maxwell Smart spoke to the Chief on his shoe phone in the late ’ 60s. James Bond’s Aston Martin had a global positioning system in the 1964 film Goldfinger. Well, mobile communications are now entirely real. Which means that rich imagination—but of a strategic kind—is necessary for today’s business executives as mobile devices create ways to provide better service to customers, to improve the flow of information within organizations, and to do a host of other innovative things. The opportunities are so large that what’s taking shape feels remarkably like 1996, and the dawn of the Internet, all over again. Many executives doubt that wireless devices will be all that important. That’s because most of the early discussions have focused on cute but inconsequential tales of Finnish kids buying Cokes with their Nokia phones, or on impractical ideas such as having restaurants send menus to the cell phones of people in the neighborhood. But it is inevitable that wireless devices will lead to a new class of mobile commerce. The Yankee Group, a research firm, says more than a billion mobile communications devices will be in use worldwide by 2003. Big technology companies are doing everything they can to make sure those devices can be used for commercial purposes. And some companies are already showing how powerful mobile commerce can be. In North America, mobile commerce, like Internet-based commerce, will be led by business-to-business applications. While all the hype has been about exotic consumer applications, there is a Tower of Babel problem because there are four digital telephone technologies and multiple wireless paging and data technologies. The explosive growth in personal digital assistants and paging devices further complicates matters, ensuring that it will be some time before a single standard emerges for mobile communication. Phones with Web browsers, which would provide one sort of standard by allowing communication via the Internet, aren’t very good just yet. With no universal means for communication, mobile commerce will develop first inside business organizations, which can control how interactions occur. For instance, MapInfo recently unveiled MapinHand, which allows workers in the field to get up-to-the-moment information on customers or problems. At Dallas’s Veterans Administration hospital, a wireless network links hand-helds carried by the medical staff. When administering medicines, nurses scan the bar codes on them and on the IDs of patients. The data are transmitted to a central computer, which manages inventory while also confirming that patients get the proper dosage. Grocery stores are starting to experiment with dedicated wireless hand-helds that give customers a map of the store and let them talk to an operator when they want to find an item. In Europe, by contrast, cell phones all use the same standards and are so widely accepted that there will be lots of consumer services that go well beyond the SMS (Short Messaging System) notes that kids send each other incessantly via cell phone. Italian airline Alitalia, for instance, provides up-to-the-minute data on its flights through a cell-phone service—something that, interestingly enough, it doesn’t bother to offer via its Web site. It’s likely that mobile appliances will rapidly become European consumers’ primary "wallet." They will also be a crucial provider of information and be a major source of entertainment. Eventually, wireless applications will become far more powerful, both in the U.S. and Europe, because of "network effects"—the benefits that come when networks link up with each other. When all wireless devices can communicate with each other, and with every computing device, the result will be the sort of explosion of innovation that happened when the Internet let all computers talk to each other. On the consumer side, these network effects will take instant messaging to the next level. People won’t just send SMS messages to those with cell phones but will correspond with anyone using an instant-messaging system on a personal computer. On the business side, mobile communications will make companies far more efficient. A retailer, for example, will be able to track every package from manufacturer to truck to store to closet and, perhaps, even to the trash dump. Being able to collect so much data will help businesses manage inventory better, cut employee theft, improve customer service, predict demand more accurately, and speed product innovation. While this may sound mundane, what if such a system could keep tabs on potentially faulty tires and notify drivers of imminent blowouts through, say, General Motors’ in-car OnStar communications system? It might save lives. Even in fixed locations, voice-activated communications could be real boons. In factories, managers could use wireless systems to restock parts while moving around an assembly line, ordering supplies quickly enough to avoid shutting down a line. As all this develops, senior executives will have to think just as imaginatively as they did to create today’s e-business models. Executives should first ask themselves how mobile communications will extend the reach of their companies. How could it change how they interact with their sales forces, branches, and business partners? Executives should then try to find innovative ways to improve customer service. What would customers like to know that they don’t know now? How would they like to interact with you—by phone, e-mail, the Internet? Where might they be when they contact you? The trap to avoid here is focusing too much on the technology. The important thing to think about is the mobility of the technology, not the technology itself. Remember that increased technology complexity requires careful management. Executives need to start experimenting with wireless devices now, to "future-proof" them for the moment when they are put to commercial use. Technology staffs will carry an extra burden over the next few years, because they will have to distinguish between the hype and what’s truly feasible. A long time ago, Albert Einstein explained the wireless telegraph of his day thusly: "The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat." That’s been the principle all along; now all we have to do is add a little imagination.
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