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A Wireless
Champion
By Michael Alan Hamlin
September 17, 2002
Although China dwarfs the Philippines
in the number of mobile phone users - last year it added over five
million users a month versus 12 million total users in the Philippines
- the Philippines is considered a sort of wireless champion because
of the tight embrace with which users have received, utilized, and
institutionalized SMS, or short messaging service. SMS is more popularly
known as texting, of course.
Almost 17 percent of all Filipinos
are pre-paid or post-paid subscribers to mobile services. Statistically,
that suggests more than one mobile phone per household. And although
the popularity of SMS text messaging is growing rapidly elsewhere,
telecom providers throughout Asia look to the Philippines to understand
trends in the development of value-added services like special logos,
ring tones, graphics, applications, and other services.
According to the DigitalFilipino
StatsReport compiled by our e-commerce law champion Janette Toral,
between 150 and 200 million text messages are sent every day in
the Philippines, with an average user sending 20. Despite the lowest
per capita income in Southeast Asia with the exception of Indonesia,
users spend on average P1,037 a month for their mobile service.
A recent survey by Toral of 528 users
in Metro Manila, Davao, Cebu, Bicol, and other parts of the country
showed that an impressive 91 percent of all respondents 17 to 56
and up own a phone. Between 90 and 100 percent of respondents aged
21 to 55 own a phone, and surprisingly perhaps, 29 to 36-year-olds
send more messages daily than every other age bracket, between 25
and 30 in all.
Toral's survey also showed that users
are using their phones for more than gossip and downloading logos,
ring tones, and icons, although that happens at least once or twice
a month. "News can be considered our application leader in
terms of being used on a regular basis," she notes. Almost
60 percent of respondents retrieve news using their mobile phones
daily, and another 15 percent once a week. By comparison, about
35 percent of users download logos and icons once a month, and another
20 percent or so do downloads once a week.
The popularity of wireless telephony
has "spurred a new area of focus for the software development
sector," according to Toral. She lists 12 companies that are
developing wireless applications, from community and entertainment
content to m-commerce transactions. At least five companies provide
SMS messaging services. imGAME develops games for mobile devices,
and Webcast Technologies and Asian Navigation Tracking Service provide
location-based services.
Another company is eScience Corporation,
which specializes in Pocket PC applications, wireless solutions,
secure payment systems, mobile commerce, computer telephony, smart
cards, and POS terminals. The company calls itself a systems pioneer
specializing in "high-impact products and applications that
capitalize on emerging wireless technologies."
Among the company's products is something
called ELMER, which stands for the considerably less marketing-savvy
moniker, Elaborate Mobile Information Retriever. In non-geeky terms,
ELMER provides a means for corporate users to access phone numbers
and other information stored in a database and automatically send
out text messages using that data. It can also receive information,
such as confirmation of attendance at a meeting for example, and
update the database.
Among its principal uses are marketing
and advertising - response rates are as high as 40 percent, versus
three percent for more traditional direct mail according to one
report. It can also be used for billing and collection reminders,
event registration, customer surveys, SMS raffle promos, payment
confirmation, or any other business purpose requiring fast, efficient,
secure, and low cost retrieval or sending of information.
Among the indicators of eScience's
success so far is its customer base. ELMER is being used by some
impressive foreign and local companies such as Philam Life (a member
of the AIG group and currently the largest insurance company in
the Philippines), New York Life, FedEx, ATI (Asian Terminals Incorporated),
Intel, Solvay Pharma, Abacus, Pioneer Allianz, and Loyola Life.
Another indicator is its first steps
toward overseas expansion. The company recently opened an office
in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and announced a partnership with Finland-based
Viescomm. Viescomm is also engaged in the wireless communications
solutions business. A third indicator of the company's potential
is that its success is not anchored on just one product. Its other
products include an SMS messaging toolkit that enables companies
to "mobile enable" their applications, called AMBER (Advanced
Mobile Builder). AMBER was developed for European companies which
generally prefer developing their own applications.
A third product is called Pocket
WI.S.E. (Pocket PC Solutions for the wireless enterprise). Pocket
WI.S.E. is an application designed for Pocket PC handheld devices
that is designed to take advantage of wireless communication technologies
such as Bluetooth, GPRS and location-based services to retrieve
and send information. eScience thinks the product is particularly
suited to pharmaceutical companies, restaurants, courier companies,
and sales companies because such tasks as remote sales order entry,
customer service, contact management, and inventory management can
be performed remotely and data transmitted back and forth constantly
using Pocket PCs.
Fourth, although small, the company
is growing. It started with six employees and has more than doubled
that number in three years. Growth so far has been limited principally,
I suppose, by inherent communication and marketing barriers that
any new company must deal with. But now that it has established
itself with some strong clients, and is gaining international credibility,
who knows where it will go?
Which suggests a fifth reason eScience could be headed for a bright
future. It believes it will only succeed by constantly introducing
a steady stream of innovative products that improve efficiency,
productivity, and profitability in significant ways.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing
director of consultancy TeamAsia and the author of three books on
Asian economies and companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian
Places, of which he is a co-author (Wiley, 2001). He can be reached
at mahamlin@teamasia.com.).
Copyright © 2002 Michael Alan
Hamlin. All Rights Reserved.
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