As the mobile market continues to grow, the range of value-added services available to mobile users is expanding at an astonishing rate. Heading these up is the current adoption, globally, of Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) services. Bringing the latest WAP technology to South Africa and making business mobile, Siemens Telecommunications has developed a WAP mobile shopping application, designed to make shopping quick, location-independent, easily accessible and hassle-free.
With wireless portals - projected by Ovum research to become a $42 billion revenue opportunity by 2005 - expanding the use of the Internet for those on the move, mobile users will increasingly shift their business and other transactions from PCs to their handsets - banking, e-mailing, surfing the Web and even shopping for that favourite book can now be done anytime and anywhere, at the touch of a button.
Driving the move to mobile business solutions, Siemens provides a full end-to-end solution that encompasses IP platforms, internetworking, mobility and e-commerce.
"Part of the e-commerce solution, the Siemens WAP-based shopping application, called WAP Intershop, works by "plugging" into existing e-commerce websites and providing the WAP view of the Intershop Hosting storefronts and e-pages," says Gary Cousins of Siemens Telecommunications. "Both WAP and Web browsers have access to the same storefront information and mobile shopping is made easy with search functions and navigation functionality."
Among other functions, shoppers can add bookmarks of regular products, add, delete and modify products in their shopping basket, view accounts, previous orders or payments and select payment and shipping methods.
"The uptake of mobile shopping is likely to be slow initially as it is dependent on how fast the necessary enabling technologies are developed and deployed," explains Cousins. "But there is nonetheless much scope for e-retailers to become m-retailers - particularly so with familiar goods such as books, CD'S and groceries - when personalisation and location issues are addressed."
"To make mobile shopping a reality, the user should ideally be faced with a one-button purchase experience," says Cousins. "This means mobile shoppers need to know what they want before making a purchase. As mobile technology advances it is likely that a shopping list will be created with a web interface and then executed from the mobile. Similarly, purchase suggestions will be based on the user's past behaviour patterns."
The Siemens WAP InterShop has been successfully demonstrated in a live application at the CommunicAsia Trade Show held in Singapore in June this year and is developed locally at the Siemens Waltloo Software Development Centre. Other Siemens WAP projects include the development of a WAP version of the popular WebCam, a WAP auctioning service, WAP Directory, WAP e-commerce, WAP banking and WAP Telnet."
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