Volume 2, Issue 12

2004 Year In Review
2004 saw the return of the Olympics to Athens, the defeat of the blue states by the red ones, the breakup of Ben and J. Lo, and the emergence of a much-heralded new category of mobile employee: the laptop-less road warrior whose office is a mobile device. Five key trends finally made that shift possible this year:

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  1. Carrier consolidation: companies have been paralyzed by concerns that their provider will not survive the telecom shakeout. The din subsided this year thanks to mega-mergers by Cingular and AT&T Wireless and Nextel and Sprint.
  2. BlackBerry usage increasing: if there is a corporate

    In This Issue

    wireless standard, it increasingly seems to be BlackBerry (see last month's newsletter). As BlackBerrys move across the org. chart, more employees now have access to wireless applications that were strictly limited to top brass last year.
  3. Device costs fall: PDA phones like BlackBerrys and Treos are affordable for corporate users when paired with volume discounts and multi-year contracts. Feature-rich, voice and data devices now cost what voice-only devices cost last year.
  4. Cost per minute falls: as voice and data rates continue to plummet (see the July trivia question), mobile devices finally are viable alternatives to land lines.
  5. Number portability: more than any other trend, number portability is leading to improved quality of service as carriers are forced to work harder than ever to retain you.
It has been a tumultuous year but the earth hasn't stopped shaking beneath our feet. In fact, we forecast that the pace of change will only increase in '05. Here are our wireless predictions for the year ahead:

  1. Convergence of wi-fi and cellular networks: wireless will be available everywhere. Devices will roam between cellular and Wi-Fi networks. Chipsets are already available. RIM announced the first BlackBerry for WLANs in October.
  2. Smartphone shipments will rise, PDA shipments will fall: Why use a PDA if it isn't a phone (see the October trivia question)? More of us will ask that next year. PDA phone shipments will surpass 10 million units in 2005.
  3. Increased availability of metropolitan area wi-fi: wi-fi mesh networks, prodded by the forthcoming WiMAX protocol (see the June newsletter for a WiMAX primer), will make city-wide wireless Internet access a reality in many major metropolitan areas by year's end.
  4. Wal-Mart will be one of the fastest-growing wireless companies in the US: the rise of MVNOs ("mobile virtual network operators") in the US will rival the growth of MVNOs in Europe. Virgin Mobile already has more than four million subscribers in the UK alone.
  5. Unlimited-use data plans will replace pay-per-byte plans: in 1997 ISPs still charged for data usage. By 1998 all of the ISPs that survived offered unlimited use Internet access. That is the current state of the wireless industry. Pay-per-byte mobile data plans will become extinct in 2005.
Aeroprise Index Of Wireless Activity
IOWA ends 2004 at 190.35, up 11% in December and more than 50% over the past 12 months. Based on our predictions for next year, expect this horse to continue its run in '05. Look for IOWA to eclipse 300 within the next 12 months.

Aeroprise In The News
Aeroprise Recognized by Red Herring Magazine, Silicon Valley Bank, and MIT for Market Leadership and Product Innovation

Industry Buzz
ExtremeTech: Wireless Industry Growth Depends on Rich Data Services

CNN Money: Sprint, Nextel Merger Changes Wireless Landscape...Again

Tip of the Month: Dynamic Alert Names
Alert names are static by default: "VIP Laptop Problem", "Urgent: Floor-Wide Outage", etc. Did you know you can also insert variables into your alert names?

Here's how:

In your APNotify URL, add an "alertName" name-value pair at the end of the querystring. Include variables from your application such as "$NAME$" or "$DATE$" to customize the alert name. The result: "Mail Server Down" becomes the more useful "ZEUS Server Buffer Overflow In Building 1" or "VIP Laptop Problem" becomes "Larry Garlick's Laptop Needs New Hard Drive In Jamaica Conference Room".

Trivia Question: Talkative Nation
Question: Which of the following is closest to the actual number of voice and data minutes used by US wireless subscribers in 2004?

(a) 500 million (b) 1 billion (c) 100 billion (d) 500 billion (e) 1 trillion

source: Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association
[answer in next month's newsletter]

Last month's question: How has usage of WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) services changed during the past year?

(a) 20% decrease (b) 10% decrease (c) No change (d) 10% increase (e) 20% increase

Last month's answer:

Usage of WAP services increased (e) 20% in the past year, fueled by the availability of new mobile applications for corporations. It seems reports of the demise of WAP were premature.

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