The study found that:
- The wireless Internet market will grow from 74 million wireless Internet subscribers, at the end of 2001, to more than 320 million subscribers by the end of 2006.
- Japan is the obvious early leader in the wireless Internet market, primarily due to the innovations based on Personal Digital Cellular (PDC) technology. However, competition is growing in Japan, and DoCoMo's next hope, its Freedom of Mobile Access (FOMA) service, is largely failing due to minimal coverage, high device and service pricing, and a lack of applications that set that technology apart from the earlier generation's service.
- The Korean market is now coming on strong in the Wireless Internet space, largely fueled by CDMA technologies, and the US is not performing as badly as some might expect.
- Europe is largely failing with GPRS technology and, not including SMS and other messaging services, is falling behind the rest of the world in terms of wireless data adoption.
"Going forward, the wireless Internet market's future rests largely on service pricing," says Becky Diercks, a Director with In-Stat/MDR. "In most regions, service pricing is completely inconsistent and far too expensive for the average consumer."
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