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UK firms still cautious about m-commerce
Monday, October 23 2000
by Paul Drury


Sixty-two percent of British companies are still taking a "wait and see"
attitude to m-commerce, according to new research released by e-business Expo
2000, Computer Weekly and Compaq.

But almost half of all those surveyed rated m-commerce as either "very or quite
important" to their organisation's future success. More than a quarter of those
companies who have not yet started to plan for m-commerce said they will do so in
the next 12 months.



Among the main reasons given by company bosses for the absence of an m-commerce
strategy were that they were concentrating on other areas (31 percent), that they
considered m-commerce an unproven technology (20 percent), lack of money (19
percent), skills shortages (18 percent) and a lack of top level support (17
percent).



Those companies who are using mobile technologies appear to be following a
similar pattern of adoption as was the case with e-business, according to the
survey of almost 500 UK companies, completed over the past six weeks. Some 17
percent currently use m-commerce for information, followed by 11 percent who
offer services, nine percent who use it to enable their sales force to work
remotely, eight percent who use it to take orders and three percent to accept
payments.



There will be a great deal of growth in the m-commerce market, the survey shows,
with 22 percent of companies expecting to use WAP as a channel in the future, 11
percent Bluetooth, 11 percent 3G and nine percent GPRS. There will also be a
considerable increase in the expected use of PDAs with 14 percent of companies
using this as a channel in the future.



It also points towards a healthy business-to-business (B2B) m-market with over 50
percent of respondents hoping to access this market using m-commerce, followed by
38 percent who hope to access the business-to-consumer (B2C) market and 26
percent who see themselves using m-commerce for individual-to-individual
purposes.



The greatest benefit m-commerce is seen to bring to an organisation is better
customer service (44 percent), followed by gaining competitive advantage (37
percent) and a means of accessing new markets (30 percent).