One of my friends forwarded me on this article and since we were
discussing payment systems earlier, it is appropiate.
Tom.
--
Thomas O'Dowd
tom@uwillsee.com
> M-commerce alliance formed
> By Lucas van Grinsven in London
> Published: April 11 2000 20:00GMT | Last Updated: April
> 12 2000 19:16GMT
>
> Nokia of Finland, Motorola of the US and Ericsson of Sweden on Tuesday
> unveiled an alliance designed to accelerate the development of mobile commerce.
>
> The three manufacturers, which control more than 50 per cent of the world
> market for mobile handsets, said they were planning a world m-commerce
> standard that would allow safe credit card payments using mobile phones.
>
> The market for business conducted over mobile phones and other handheld
> devices is expected to generate revenues of between $13bn and $28bn in
> Europe alone by 2002.
>
> The three partners said they were joining forces to prevent a proliferation of
> standards that would confuse customers and delay the global adoption of mobile
> commerce.
>
> The move will make it harder for any one industry player to set a proprietary
> software standard and dominate developments. Microsoft, the world's largest
> software group, is developing mobile internet applications independently.
>
> The partners said they would make the standard freely available to other
> manufacturers and players in the m-commerce market.
>
> Matti Alahuhta, president of Nokia's mobile phones division, said any mobile
> phone sold after 2000 will have m-commerce capabilities.
>
> The new standard would make it possible to buy goods and transfer money and
> would replace credit cards, identity cards and loyalty cards, he said.
>
> Mr Alahuhta said he expected the standard would be embraced by mobile
> telephone operators, banks and other mobile phone producers in the next few
> weeks.
>
> "This is about setting the direction and accelerating the development of mobile
> e-commerce," he said.
>
> Half of the 1.2bn mobile phones in use by 2003 will be capable of receiving
> information from the internet, Nokia says, while the number of internet-connected
> personal computers is expected to total only 400m in that year.
>
> The new mobile phone e-commerce standard would not be restricted to the GSM
> mobile phone market, which is the de facto standard in Europe and parts of Asia,
> but would apply to other markets such as the CDMA phones which are gaining
> popularity in the US.
>
> The three companies refused to disclose the amount of their investment in the
> new standard. Jan Ahrenbring, Ericsson's vice-president for worldwide marketing,
> said banks and telecom operators had pressed the three manufacturers to
> introduce a common standard.
>
> Ericsson said that with the recent launch of internet-enabled phones
> (WAP-phones), it had emerged that companies were creating a variety of
> applications that could confuse users.
>
> As this could slow adoption of the technology, a standard platform was needed.
> The new standard will make all mobile phone transactions appear identical,
> following similar guidelines for security and identical procedures for electronic
> signatures.
>
> To build the new e-commerce standard the three phone manufacturers will be
> using technology they jointly developed for WAP, which has become the de facto
> standard protocol for mobile web-pages.
Received on Fri Apr 14 05:05:02 2000