Buzz Issue: A WAP on the head, 09/11/00

Hype machine in full throttle

By Julie Bort
Network World, 09/11/00

By 2005, sales of handsets with microbrowsers will grow more than 900% to $7.8 billion.

- The Strategis Group, Washington, D.C.

More than 9.6 million people will have subscribed to Third Generation Networks (3G) or 2.5G mobile high-speed data services by 2005; 6.8 million of that number will be business subscribers and 2.8 million residential subscribers.

- Strategis Group

The Internet economy will have the same impact on the wireless business as it has had on other types of businesses that have tried to go online.

- Mainspring, Cambridge, Mass.

Within the next year, the percentage of people using the wireless Internet in the U.S. may reach 78% of the country's Internet user population.

- Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, New York, and Corechange, a business-to-business software vendor, Boston.

A time will come when the majority of Internet access will be through wireless devices and Webmasters will have to think of wireless users' needs first.

- IDC, Framingham, Mass.

By mid-2001, all digital cellular/PCS handsets shipped in the world will be Wireless Application Protocol-capable. By the end of 2002, there will be more wireless subscribers capable of Internet access than wired Internet users.

- IDC

The number of global wireless Internet users will increase from 300 million in 1999 to one billion in 2003.

- Jupiter Communications, New York

Some 71% of Network World Fusion readers surveyed said they do not use Wireless Application Protocol but "are watching it and will take action when necessary."

- Network World Buzz-o-meter survey

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