Here and Now

Chief Executive, The, August, 2000 by Erik Baard

The wireless revolution is coming to a cell phone or PDA near you--or maybe it's already there. Here's the skinny on what you can get today-- and a preview of technology to come.

Think the days when you'll be keeping tabs on Junior's day at the park via your PDA, tap on your steering wheel to get your e-mail, or have sensors in your shirt monitor your vital signs are years away? Think again. Thanks to a handful of companies aggressive about adopting--and adapting to--wireless technology, such wonders are already possible. And soon they'll be a part of daily life.

Somewhere in Prague, a thirsty Czech is pointing his mobile phone at a vending machine and pushing a few buttons to summon forth a can of Coke. A businesswoman in New York is using her PalmPilot to call up a real-time stock price courtesy of Fidelity, while the famished driver of a 2000-model Saab taps into GM's OnStar service to get directions to the closest McDonald's.

A Finnish rock fan is dialing up a download of her favorite band's latest tune on her cell phone, even as a college student in Italy uses his to check a daily Internet horoscope. In Japan, preteens are downloading cartoon images through NTT DoCoMo's wireless service, while their big brothers and sisters flirt virtually by trading electronic notes and images on their technicolor iModes.

Okay, maybe that's not all happening right now, but it could be. Although wireless Internet applications are still billed as the next technological tidal wave, these scenarios--and others like them--are already a part of day-to-day life around the globe. Who's driving the transition toward this new, "mobile lifestyle?" The usual suspects--hordes of early adopters, both companies eager to find and deliver the next innovative application and consumers eager to embrace it.

For now, the focus continues to be on handheld devices like Internet-enabled cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) such as the Palm Pilot VII, which, as the first PDA with a built-in wireless modem, has a healthy lead in the race for mobile market share. These are heady days for that company, notes Carl Yankowski, Palm Company's chairman and chief executive. "What the Walkman did for music, what the cell phone did for telephony, Palm will do for your wireless data world--simply being connected. Anytime, anywhere," he boasts. And that's just the beginning.

Both Yankowski and a group of analysts at International Data Corporation (IDC) say that cell phones and PDAs will blend into one tool within a few years. Already, their predecessors--those once-ubiquitous beepers and pagers--are being disdained as miniature dinosaurs. In the meantime, companies in industries ranging from financial services to retail are scrambling to develop services that work with the smaller screens and slower data speeds of existing wireless devices.

Fidelity Investments was the first financial company out the gate in October 1998 with its InstantBroker wireless service. The company offers account balance information, real-time quotes, and trading, as well as "triggers" and alerts when selected stock prices change in absolute or percentage terms, over Palm VII handheld personal digital assistants (the only financial software currently built in), RIM Interactive 950 pagers, and the Sprint PCS phone network.

Fast forward to 2000 and Fidelity customers will soon pay bills, aggregate services, and transfer sizable assets wirelessly as the security of the system improves, predicts Fidelity's Joe Ferra. "This is just ever-increasing," asserts Ferra, who refers to current capabilities as "a bit bounded." Another customer convenience around the corner is the ability to redirect where information will be delivered. Is your Palm battery running low late one morning? Go to Fidelity's Web page and have your afternoon alerts and quotes zapped to your pager or cell phone, or the hotel fax machine.

Or to your new car. General Motors, BMW, and other car companies, are ready to receive. "Right now the BMW 7 Series features a digital portable phone that can easily serve as one's personal communication system outside the car, yet, when you plug it into the car, the phone book may be accessed using the steering wheel controls," says Tom Purves, chairman and CEO, BMW U.S. Holding Corporation. "With the advent of wireless communications and devices like Palm Pilots, it will become possible to send and receive e-mail and import and access information from the car in a very efficient and safe manner."

Both BMW and GM are emphasizing safety with development of their cars' wireless features. "People are spending 500 million hours a week in vehicles in the U.S.," explains Chet Huber, president and general manager of GM's wireless program, called OnStar, who notes that more than half of cell phone calls are made from inside cars and the distraction of punching small buttons has raised safety concerns. "We believe the car is important enough to deserve its own dial tone," he adds.

In the effort to send data to drivers without sending them careening over embankments, the trick is to deliver e-mail and other benefits of the Web without taking drivers' eyes off the road or their hands off the wheel.