SAN FRANCISCO -- In recognition of the wireless industry's growing status, Seybold opened Monday with an eight-hour seminar on wireless publishing.
"Opportunities for content developers and producers are significant in this new environment," Seybold coordinators boasted in a program guide.
But the enthusiasm of Seybold's program coordinators fell mostly on deaf ears. And if the response from Seybold attendees is any indication, wireless applications on cell phones are a concept that's yet to connect with the American public.
In a Moscone Center room that could seat about 100 people, more than half the chairs remained empty throughout the wireless publishing discussion. Robert Angus, an event spokesman, led the event with a disclaimer on the lack of participants and then asked members of the audience to fill up the chairs in the front of the room. That way, he said in a positive spin, attendees are closer to the panelists.
During the seminar, the panelists, which included members of the industry and analysts, offered the audience little hope of work in this supposedly growing industry.
There are conflicting technical standards to transmit data and security breaches to worry about, they warned. And no, they have no clue how you will make money offering wireless services.
"If I knew, I wouldn't be here," joked Seamus McAteer, an analyst from Jupiter Media Metrix.
For members of the audience, like Leonardo Nagata, an analyst for the Foote, Cone & Belding advertising firm in San Francisco, such comments were disappointing and discouraging. Nagata, who doesn't plan on designing services for mobile phones and only attended the seminar out of curiosity, said he had hoped the panelists would make a few guesses as to what would make people adopt the wireless Web.
He recalled a more enjoyable conference where one company showed off a "hunting game" for mobile phones. People in the audience used their mobile phones as guns to "hunt down prey," or other people that signed up for the service. They would "shoot" by sending a short text message over their mobile phones.
But at Seybold, there was only straight discussion.
"I don't think it was a good discussion," Nagata said. "It's too much about the technology. We're still arguing over standards."
In his keynote at the wireless seminar, Philippe Kahn, chairman and founder of LightSurf Technologies, said it wasn't clear how consumers will pay for video on their cell phones. He added that telcos across the world were having a hard time justifying the costs for additional spectrum to deliver video wirelessly.
However, pointing out that people in Europe pay 10 cents to 15 cents per message to send short text messages over their mobile phones, he was confident that sending these messages with photographs will become a hit.
"There is more photograph-viewing today than 20 years ago and that's because of the World Wide Web," he said.
Kahn predicts that people will snap pictures of themselves on their mobile phones and send them via short messaging service (SMS) to their friends instead of a postcard. Construction workers will pull out their cell phones to take pictures of a work in progress and send it to a supervisor for confirmation.
"Anybody could become a photojournalist," he said.
If you haven't guessed already, Kahn's company, LightSurf, lets cell phone users send and receive instant messages and photographs over their mobile phones.
But probably the most-enthusiastic panelist was Cindy Dahm, vice president of marketing for Openwave Systems, the company that pioneered wireless application protocol to give Web access to mobile phone users. She said that unlike the fixed-line Internet, mobile phone users were already paying for content.
She said 1 billion short mobile text messages were sent last month in Britain alone.
Mobile phone users pay more for calls than home phone users. And, in Japan, mobile phone owners pay for such services as "virtual girlfriends" that leave witty sayings on mobile phones, she said.
The audience howled at the Japanese scenario.
But McAteer, the Jupiter Media Metrix analyst, calmed the audience when he dismissed the virtual girlfriend as a cultural phenomenon that could not be repeated in the United States.
"I disagree with the rosy picture being painted so far," he said. "In Japan a new medium has been created. You only have three carriers competing. The Japanese and the American are different."
The "new medium" in Japan is Internet access. The Japanese are more likely to access the Web on their phones than through their desktop computers, like Americans do, McAteer said.
McAteer, however, acknowledged that SMS was a moneymaker in Europe, although he didn't view it as pertinent to the publishing world.
"What we're dealing with is a four-line monochrome display," he said. "Not an exciting platform for publishing."
As for other uses for text on a mobile phone, like reading a news clip, he called "news on a WAP phone for desperation access."
Besides SMS, the only other non-voice services mobile phone owners are paying for are melodic ring tones. McAteer gave as an example Telenor, a Norwegian carrier billing $100 million a year for ring tones that people subscribe to by sending an SMS message.
But again, the example had nothing to do with the publishing world.
McAteer sees some potential in the wireless Web on larger devices, like a laptop computer. However, he pointed out Metricom Ricochet's recent demise, as proof that more comprehensive and cheaper wireless coverage is needed to lure customers. The Metricom Ricochet service was not available in every major city in the U.S. and cost customers $75 a month.
But even such promising technology as wireless Net access over a desktop computer has holes. Panelist Christopher Klaus of Internet Security Systems, joked he wasn't trying to scare people into thinking that wireless technology is "horrible," but he warned of many security breaches.
First of all, many people buy wireless access points and PC cards for $200 at their local CompUSA and set it up in their homes and offices without setting up a "key" to ensure they are the only ones that tap into the system. When they don't set up a key, their neighbors are able to score free Net access by tapping into the same wireless system, as long as they have a compatible PC card. Companies, who are mostly unaware certain departments or individuals have set up wireless Net access, run the risk of hackers "sniffing" information off company servers.
"Hackers can get on access points without much login information," he said.
Klaus suggested that businesses, especially, set up the key and build a virtual private network -– security software -– and firewalls to keep out intruders.
One member of the audience, apparently concerned that people in his workplace have set up such access points without letting anyone in the company know, asked Klaus how to find out where these access points are. Klaus said his company uses special equipment to detect them.
Nagata, the advertiser disappointed with the conference, said he's heard about the security breaches before.
"Wireless has been discouraged for awhile," he said.
The Seybold conference will run until Friday. The exhibit halls open on Tuesday.
