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Defining The Business Value Of Technology
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By Jason Levitt
While everyone waits to find out what the "killer app" will be for users browsing the Internet on their cell phones, there's one application category that's evolving rapidly and offers unprecedented eyeballs and "stickiness" with users: games.
I've been doing the wireless trade show circuit, and the number of companies I see developing games for cell phones is growing. These companies aren't just pitching to kids and consumers; they're developing and partnering with mainstream businesses, cell-phone service providers, Web portals, and other high-profile network entities.
Take a company like In-fusio. It can develop cell-phone games for your business that use your company's logo, or you can host one of In-fusio's existing games from your Web site. The company can also manage ad campaigns for cell-phone users. It doesn't just base its games on Wireless Application Protocol -- it also uses voice recognition and SMS (Short Messages Service), which more handsets support.
NGame, another cell gaming company, sees the convergence of broadband, cell networks, and other platforms as its target audience. The company has developed a server suite and scripting language that it says allows it to design and deploy games across many devices, not just cell phones. It also says that its technology will allow access from multiple device types simultaneously. Picture people at their PCs playing games against cell-phone users and other devices -- more eyeballs gazing at the same service. NGame has scored a number of partnerships with providers such as AT&T Wireless, which offers some of nGames' cell games for its PocketNet users, and Carphone Warehouse, a mobile portal site.
Handsets Of The Near Future
The Growing User Pool
Compared with their PC counterparts, WAP games can be deployed more quickly, custom games are easier to create, and follow-up games can be developed rapidly. The result is that cell phone-based games are a more flexible tool for marketing than they are on the Internet.
Offered today under brand names such as Sprint's Wireless Web, AT&T's PocketNet, and Verizon's Mobile Web, cell-phone browsers are finding a new set of prospective users. And unlike PC users, these people carry their platform with them everywhere they go and can boot up almost anywhere in seconds. These users aren't just playing games, but they might be.
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Just as in the early days of computing, most cell-phone games these days are text-based. That will soon change, however, as more-powerful cell phones enter the market that allow a more-sophisticated multimedia experience. A recent demo I saw of Hitachi's C309H cell phone, one of the first cell phones with a color screen, was impressive, and it certainly came close to Nintendo Game Boy quality but on a smaller scale. No larger or heavier than most current cell phones, the C309H nonetheless has a bright, 143-by-120 pixel, 256-color display, and a 16-note polyphonic sound generator with an external speaker. Scheduled for release in Japan later this month, the C309H is one of the first of what should be a growing number of new cell-phone handsets with advanced multimedia features.
I could easily quote one of the staggeringly large analyst forecasts for the number of expected cell-phone users over the next few years, but it's more instructive to look at the present, where the actual number of users today with cell phones capable of browsing the Web is still rather small compared with the total number of users who own cell phones. About 16 million users worldwide have cell phones capable of browsing the Internet, according to Phone.com, makers of the most-popular browser for cell-phone handsets. Of that 16 million, about 12 million are running Phone.com's browser. That's still a good chunk of eyeballs, and by early next year, all new cell-phone handsets are expected to be capable of Web browsing via WAP.
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