Exhibitors showcase mobile applications of the future

While delegates discussed the future business models for Internet access from GSM phones, the exhibition at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes was packed with companies engaged in the business of getting that content to mobile Internet users. Reflecting the increased size of the mobile industry, a much larger exhibition featured equipment manufacturers, service suppliers, operators, and, significantly, content providers.

Predictably, given the publicity surrounding WAP, the wireless application protocol driving mobile Internet access, there were many small companies supplying WAP technology and content. Access to customised stock quotes was one of the favourite, if predictable, applications, but straightforward access to an automated directory enquiry service demonstrated the more widespread potential of the new service.

The big, established equipment vendors had little new to excite consumers, but a demonstration of WAP services at the Alcatel stand did reveal a Sagem phone with WAP already enabled over GPRS. Most announcements from equipment vendors were of more interest to operators: Nortel announced a new network base station allowing wide-band data access, and forecast a rapid changeover from today's circuit-based networks to future packet-based networks which have been the bedrock of the Internet.

Ericsson and Nokia announced other upgraded network equipment, including an Internet-Protocol (IP) base station and future all-IP-based networks.

Nokia, like Alcatel, promised GPRS handsets by the end of this year.

Few surprising new technologies were on display, but a new Irish company grabbed attention with a new data-routing technology called information routing. Mr Robert Baker, managing director of Dublin-based Xiam, demonstrated the new, faster routing technology from his Nokia Communicator device by collecting live Irish Times headlines and stock quotes from Yahoo! He explained that routing whole messages at a time was much more efficient than the underlying packet technology which has been used for routing up until now, and said that as the only company at the show with this technology he was the subject of a lot of attention from operators.

Another Irish company claiming a first was Jinny Software, which said it was the first company to implement the wireless security layer in the company's WAP gateway. The so-called wireless transport security layer, provided by Baltimore Technologies, allows WAP users to access the Internet from their mobile phones with end-to-end security, which is seen as crucial for the predicted mobile e-commerce (dubbed m-commerce) market. Jinny Software develops a range of products for mobile operators, and includes Allied Irish Banks, Eircell, and operators in Jordan and the Lebanon among its customers.

Another rapidly growing area in mobile telephony is customer relationship management, and Irish company Norkom was among those exhibiting. Its chief executive Mr Paul Kerley, said the Dublin-based company which supplied analytical tools to improve knowledge of customer behaviour aimed to become number one in its market in Europe this year, and number five worldwide.

In all, six Irish companies exhibited at the Enterprise Ireland stand, while several more were scattered around the two exhibition halls.

Among the quirkier of mobile content providers was a Finnish company called Yomi Media, which sells operators the software to allow their customers to compose and download new melodies and new icons for Nokia mobile phones. Downloading new phone icons is very popular in Japan, while a service to download a daily insult is reportedly popular in Norway. It's little wonder no one is sure where this industry is going.

Eoin Licken may be reached at elicken@irish-times.ie