Yankee Group study reveals fewer than 100,000 US Mobile Commerce users have made approximately one million transactions using wireless devices - Market Intelligence - Brief Article

Mobile Internet, The, May, 2002

According to Adam Zawel, director of the Yankee Group's Wireless/Mobile Enterprise & Commerce research and consulting practice, "Mobile payments will become a real opportunity once next-generation networks are launched and multimedia wireless Internet devices are in consumers' hands. Short messaging service (SMS) will also facilitate the emergence of a mobile commerce market in the United States as carriers finally allow messages to be sent between users on different networks in 2002. The SMS medium can be used for marketing, secure payment authorization, and even the delivery of digital content like ring tones."

Specific US carrier strategies are still emerging. AT&T is likely to follow the lead of its strategic investor DoCoMo to establish a billing, settlement, and customer care platform. Sprint and Cingular will build on their early initiatives with ring tones, graphics, and games. Verizon and Nextel will probably leverage their BREW and Java platforms to charge for downloads.

This report focuses on the infrastructure that carriers must deploy to capitalize on the premium content opportunity. The nature and magnitude of the mobile commerce opportunity were detailed in the October 2001 Yankee Group Mobile Commerce Strategies Report, "Mobile Payments. What Are They Worth?" In the new report, the Yankee Group focuses on carrier initiatives to prepare for digital micropayments, which make up the largest category in our mobile commerce forecasts representing more than 70 percent of transactions over the next five years.

For more information, contact Adam Zawel at azawel@yankeegroup.com