Hi Juergen,
The original post of this thread was actually done in good faith. Eventhough the
CEO of the WAP Forum had told me the number, I did not automatically take it as
fact. I was actually looking for some input to: if the numbers made any sense at
all. I was actually being, as you allured to, satirical, actually ironic is a
better word, when I made the back of the envelope calculations on the possible
meanings of the 4.4 million WML pages. As a journalist, unless someone can tell
me a meaningful number that makes more sense, I am not supposed to have any
opinion, and should "believe" Goldman of the WAP Forum.
In my job, it is all well to doubt what people with vested interests in the
topic tell you, but there is a need to seek what is more (because pure reality
is often subjective) real, instead of simply disregarding what people say
because it makes no sense to oneself. In this case, there is a figure of WML
pages, which for most journalist is printable. What I was after was a little
depth, to explain what that figure means in the real world.
It is absolutely true that I'm not as technically adept as many on this list,
but I think any journalist will have to take Goldman at his word. After all, he
represents an industry body consisting of most of the world's wireless
companies, including DoCoMo. Unless someone can tell me otherwise, I have no
reason to doubt his sincerity.
As for someone using the figures in their business plans and ending up in the
fuckedcompany site, my only defence is that as a journalist, we never offer any
numbers out of the blue unless we are absolutely sure of their validity. As I've
noted, it was Goldman who told me the information. I did not make it up on my
own. Any reasonable businessman or potential investor should check those figures
with Goldman and the WAP Forum before they launch their business or put their
money into one based on those figures.
Perhaps some on this group think I made up the whole thing up to upset this
list. That is perhaps my fault. I made the enquiry on this group because it is
the few groups that I subscribe to and I wanted information on the Japanese
mobile market, not DoCoMo, but KDDI, which uses WAP (I believe, since I have not
had the chance to confirm the fact). My intention was to find out KDDI's content
support since it actually has a higher ratio of WAP subscribers per overall
subscriber base, (I think 3 million WAP to 6 million overall, or about 50%),
than i-mode, which has some 12 million i-mode users for some 36 million PDC
subscribers, or about 33% (please keep in mind these figures are off the top of
my head but based on reports).
And yes, I've tested Hutchison's WAP service in Hong Kong. Also it was on a
packetized CDMA (IS-95B) network. And given DoCoMo's relationship with
Hutchison, the service should at least resemble that of i-mode. But the
experience was still disappointing, perhaps it is the first generation, and
there is still only one handset, from a Japanese handset maker (Sanyo) which
support the packetized service. The problem was perhaps not the network or the
service, but the user interface on the phone. Still, it doesn't change the fact
that most of the content was stale (personal opinion) and getting anywhere
outside the operator's preset menu was difficult.
I'm sorry this response is so long, but I don't want subscribers on this list to
think that I was intentionally being confrontational because I was talking about
WAP.
The last point: I write for two magazines. Telecom Asia and Wireless Asia. Our
URL is: www.telecomasia.net. Click on the magazine names on the right section
for achives and stories. Incidently someone, I think Mika, actually linked one
of my stories, about Wireless Games to this list. Thanks.
Please don't take this in the wrong way. I just wanted to present my point of
view. And for the moderators, please don't take me off this list. It is great,
and if anyone want to know about the wireless Internet in Hong Kong, I'll be
happy to help.
Tony
Juergen Specht wrote:
> Something about journalism and statistics:
>
> TC> survey, nor any definition as such for an individual page was. The stats
> TC> that I got from Goldman were that, from next to none in Dec 1999, there
> TC> are now "more than 4.4 million WML pages," online as of Aug 2000.
> So you got some numbers from the CEO of the Wapforum (!) without any
> definition about the measuring method. He got this numbers from a
> company who made this report especially for them (!).
>
> Please have a look at the George Bush Website and you see that he has a
> strong lead over Gore, says an totally independent institute.
>
> And now look at Al Gore's website and read that he has a strong lead
> over Bush, says an totally independent institute.
>
> You understand what I mean?
>
> TC> That's
> TC> 4.4 million in 8 months, or nearly half a million WML pages a month.
> TC> Even if you calculate each WAP site with 100 individual pages, that
> TC> would mean 5,000 new WAP sites (presumably new WAP content providers as
> TC> well) a month.
> But you can not calculate anything without the definition how this was
> measured.
>
> TC> Either that means there is a lot of content creation
> TC> support for the platform, or there is a lot of really big sites with
> TC> hundreds of sub-pages.
> If you look at this site: http://www.nooper.com (I know, I know, Folks,
> but I have no other example right now!), your browser request gets a total
> individual page, especially sended to your computer.
> It looks almost the same to everybody, but there is this
> little number below and this number changes all the time. This page is
> totally dynamically on the fly produced and this page (or this unique
> URL) could show everybody totally different content...how much 'pages'
> are this?
>
> TC> That or someone is lying.
> Don't be so extreme. If you don't understand something, but you are
> really sure about a (totally wrong) fact, you tell it to other people as
> a (totally right) fact. This is not lying, it's missing knowledge and a
> lot of self esteem.
>
> TC> Pinpoint, who supposedly did the survey has a Web site (add .com), but
> TC> does not have any information on the findings. Presumably, the survey
> TC> was done internally for the WAP Forum, so not available to the public.
> See my presidental example above.
>
> TC> I agree totally that there is a lot of confusion with terms to describe
> TC> the Internet, wireless of wired, with much of the information completely
> TC> meaningless to most people except for journalist looking for a story or
> TC> web sites which might want to sell advertising or attract investors.
> Actually these wrong or false or not confirmed statistics will be
> written down in magazines and very often they are the base for new
> businessplans. Later you can find some of the results of these businessplans
> at this service: http://www.fuckedcompany.com
>
> TC> On the other hand, a sudden surge of content for WAP might indicate some
> TC> kind of acceptance on the industry's part for the platform although i
> TC> suspect and from my experience testing out a WAP service on Hutchison's
> ^
>
> So you tested one (!) WAP service from 5000 new WAP sites per month
> (it's your calculation). And...
> TC> network in Hong Kong, that only highly localized content will work.
> ...you have a final conclusion.
>
> TC> Besides, trying to get outside an operator's menu using a WAP phone is
> TC> near impossible, probably because they don't provision international
> TC> bandwidth to support mobile phones accessing overseas content. Also
> TC> according to my colleagues here at the magazine, some WAP phones don't
> TC> even let you bookmark sites, so users are forced to laborously enter the
> TC> address of WAPsites each time.
> So, this means that nobody can access the 4 million pages, right?
>
> Haha, you really made my day. Now please tell us for which magazine you
> work, but I assume it must be this here:
>
> http://www.satirewire.com/
>
> :)
>
> Juergen
>
> PS: In germany we have a common quote: Don't believe statistics which
> you not faked by yourself.
>
> [ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Thu Nov 2 19:26:33 2000