Wireless Infrastructure

Wireless e-commerce (or mobile commerce) is projected to become a US$12.4 billion market by 2005 in Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan, according to International Data Corp (IDC). Mobile commerce applications such as mobile banking, email, wireless gaming, and stock trading already are available in the marketplace. For example, NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode service in Japan, which provides email, web access, wireless banking, stock information service, flight information, online reservations, news and weather, yellow page service, fortune telling, online games, and digital content retrieval from its partners, in addition to regular cellular-phone functions. DoCoMo was formed in July 1992. It had sales of 4.6 trillion yens in fiscal 2000 year ended by March 31, 2001. It was reported that the subscriber number of the i-mode service exceeded 28 million as of October 2001. We see some countries, for example, Korea, where wireless subscription numbers exceed wired customers. A recent statistical report (October 2001) shows that China now has the largest hand-phone user base in the world, with a total of over 120 million users, or 10% penetration rate. In Hong Kong, over 5 million people out of a total of 7 million have a cellular phone. The penetration rates in European countries are also high. All this evidence shows that the growth of mobile commerce is phenomenal and its potential is huge.