'Getting close to your customers' will drive m-commerce

Companies' desire to get closer to their customers has been singled out as the main driver for m-commerce in the latest survey from analyst house Datamonitor.

According to the 'European m-commerce study 2001', 54 per cent of respondents perceived new channels to market and customer services as the main drivers for mobile commerce.

Markus Siivola, technology analyst with Datamonitor, said this shows European companies want to improve customer services.

Dion Price, senior industry analyst at Mobile Stream, said he believes customer contact scored highly in the survey because companies are looking for new ways of generating funds and they "perceive this as a new avenue to customers and revenues".

But Siivola admitted technology is a barrier for m-commerce at the moment, adding that vendors and network operators "must be careful how they continue to market this technology - it's coming out a lot slower than we were initially told it would".

Price agreed, saying the time scale is still a little "hazy". According to Price there are three stages holding back the technology that must integrate to ensure the new GPRS and UTMS technologies enter the marketplace smoothly.

Firstly, the infrastructure - it must be up and running reliably, with base stations in place secondly, the handset issues which have hampered WAP take-up must be resolved and finally, services on the ground such as user applications, interfaces and security need to be up to speed.

"There are three legs of the stool and if one leg is missing the stool will fall over," he said.

Siivola said the survey is a strong indicator of the readiness for a progression from ebusiness to m-commerce. "There are a lot of black clouds out there but I definitely see a silver lining for the future," he said.

Datamonitor questioned 208 companies across Europe.