Durlacher's new UMTS report is a must read for every wireless wizard
Research-focused investment bank Durlacher has landed another peace
of worthwhile research into the mobile economy. The good thing is: you
can download it from today onwards on durlacher.com.
Myself, I am reading this thing right now and I can agree to the major findings.
Yes, we should concentrate for a while on SMS. Yes, WAP will survive but not
on PDAs, but rather on phones. Yes, GPRS will play a role, but, still there are no handsets
in the market except for a disappointing Motorola Timeport 260. Plus operators
price GPRS too expensive, looks like they publicly test the whole GPRS experience.
So, practice your patience some more time until GPRS will deliver the WAP boost
most of us were hoping for.
Durlacher, this time with the support of Finnish VC Eqvitec and Helsinki's University
of Technology, forecasts UMTS license expenses in Europe of 120 billion Euro. Another 140 billion
Euro will be spent to build the networks over the next couple of years. At least in
the handset market, it is to be seen how big the market share of Japanese and Korean
companies selling to European UMTS users will become. I guess it will be considerable.
The mobile station from Siemens I have seen in Cannes at the
3GSM World Congress
was huge, more than 100 Kilograms, taller than 1 meter - it will take a very long time
to make this fit into your trouser's pocket.
Interestingly, Durlacher is positive on Wireless LANs that will offer low-cost, high-bandwidth
Internet access points in public hot spots. WLANs will definitely co-exist in a landscape of
multiple Radio Access Technologies. This will happen in the next couple of years.
And finally, another piece of wisdom that will motivate all those startups that are trying
to negotiate revenue sharing deals with operators with little or no success up to now.
As mobile voice users are coming to a point of saturation at the end of 2001, operators need
to increase ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) with the help of data services. These data services
will mostly be developed by third parties. Thus, operators have to open up their mind and
share some decent percentage of the money they receive from the customer. I still wonder why operators
are so slow in learning this. In Japan, it works for 2 years now. Yes, Durlacher agrees, too, that
Japan enjoys a 2-year lead over Europe. Still, they are sceptical concerning the repeatable success
of i-mode in the European Markets.
Further learnings from this report you should extract yourself by simply reading it.
Enjoy the wireless wisdom.
