Asian Wireless Market BoomsAsia leads other parts of the world...

Asian Wireless Market Booms

Asia leads other parts of the world in wireless adoption, and growth will continue.
September 6, 2005

The death of laptops and the proliferation of new content, particularly blogging, will drive wireless market growth in Asia, according to panelists at the Red Herring conference in Shanghai on Tuesday.



The panelists, who included investors, a device maker, and a mobile game developer, were gung ho about the future of the wireless market.



India, for example, currently has 50 million mobile phone subscribers, and the number is growing by 2 million a month. South Korea plans to deploy a WiMax network next April to offer greater wireless broadband access to its citizens.



Tom Kirkwood, CEO of Mobile Internet Asia (MINT), a Beijing-based venture capital firm, said the mobile market is attractive because it has developed a reliable method of revenue collection.



“I challenge you to come up with 10 industries in China in which you can collect money easily,” said Mr. Kirkwood. In the mobile service world, however, he added, “if people don’t pay, it gets turned off.”


‘You need to combine them to create the killer application.’

-Charles Yang,

dopod Communications






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Laptops Versus Phones

Consumers like to access their email and favorite songs wherever they go, forcing chip producers, content providers, and other technology companies to create more powerful handheld devices and make fresh entertainment content available.



Vishal Gondal, CEO of Indiagames, a mobile game creator, predicts that in the next two to five years, people are likely to stop relying on laptops as their primary mobile device for communicating, accessing the web, and enjoying entertainment content. Instead they will employ their cell phones.



“Your mobile phone can carry a lot of data,” he said.



Nevertheless, laptop sales are booming and outpacing desktops. Laptop sales rose 24.6 percent in 2004, compared with an 11.7 percent increase in desktop sales.



Charles Yang, CEO of dopod Communications, a mobile phone maker in China, said he stopped carrying his laptop two years ago and had switched to a smart phone. But he conceded that the majority of Chinese consumers don’t want to pay for high-end phones. Less than 10 percent of Chinese mobile users have high-end smart phones, he added.



While a great deal of attention has been focused on the growth of the third-generation (3G) cellular market, Mr. Yang argued that the best wireless opportunities lie in bringing together what he called the 4 Cs: computer, communication, consumer electronics, and content.



“You need to combine them to create the killer application,” he said.



Music Blog Investments

Investors agreed that challenges remain if growth is to continue. Mr. Kirkwood, for example, sees opportunities in blogging and other types of personal content creation. The creation of original content drives Internet usage.



“We try to avoid businesses that rely on intellectual property or media rights held offshore,” said Mr. Kirkwood. “We invest in blogging businesses where people create their own music.”



Bill Tai, a partner in Charles River Ventures of Menlo Park, California, said his firm invests in a variety of technologies in the wireless market, from semiconductors and routers to mobile content builders. He added that the United States is behind Asia in capitalizing on the growth of web-based services for mobile phone users.



“The pace of innovation isn’t there [in the U.S.],” said Mr. Tai. “Service providers are trying to maintain existing revenue streams in the face of a lot of change.”











Laptops Versus Phones

Consumers like to access their email and favorite songs wherever they go, forcing chip producers, content providers, and other technology companies to create more powerful handheld devices and make fresh entertainment content available.



Vishal Gondal, CEO of Indiagames, a mobile game creator, predicts that in the next two to five years, people are likely to stop relying on laptops as their primary mobile device for communicating, accessing the web, and enjoying entertainment content. Instead they will employ their cell phones.



“Your mobile phone can carry a lot of data,” he said.



Nevertheless, laptop sales are booming and outpacing desktops. Laptop sales rose 24.6 percent in 2004, compared with an 11.7 percent increase in desktop sales.



Charles Yang, CEO of dopod Communications, a mobile phone maker in China, said he stopped carrying his laptop two years ago and had switched to a smart phone. But he conceded that the majority of Chinese consumers don’t want to pay for high-end phones. Less than 10 percent of Chinese mobile users have high-end smart phones, he added.



While a great deal of attention has been focused on the growth of the third-generation (3G) cellular market, Mr. Yang argued that the best wireless opportunities lie in bringing together what he called the 4 Cs: computer, communication, consumer electronics, and content.



“You need to combine them to create the killer application,” he said.



Music Blog Investments

Investors agreed that challenges remain if growth is to continue. Mr. Kirkwood, for example, sees opportunities in blogging and other types of personal content creation. The creation of original content drives Internet usage.



“We try to avoid businesses that rely on intellectual property or media rights held offshore,” said Mr. Kirkwood. “We invest in blogging businesses where people create their own music.”



Bill Tai, a partner in Charles River Ventures of Menlo Park, California, said his firm invests in a variety of technologies in the wireless market, from semiconductors and routers to mobile content builders. He added that the United States is behind Asia in capitalizing on the growth of web-based services for mobile phone users.



“The pace of innovation isn’t there [in the U.S.],” said Mr. Tai. “Service providers are trying to maintain existing revenue streams in the face of a lot of change.”