M is for mobile

Bringing Microsoft into the WAP fold was quite the coup for you. Still, being in bed with the praying mantis of the software industry must make for some sleepless nights.

Well, WAP is open. So anybody who agrees to abide by its bylaws is welcome. But that includes opening any patents you have, agreeing to never block the standard and doing a lot of things that can't be easy for Microsoft. Still, if you agree to all this -- which Microsoft has -- you're part of the club. And we're delighted because, frankly, it's better for Microsoft to be inside than for us to have to fight them.

Reports indicate that you expect to derive most of your revenue this year from the sale of WAP servers. But, with Nokia and Ericsson planning to roll out WAP servers of their own, do you foresee your emphasis shifting more to application development?

Yes. Today, we actually sell three types of products. We sell WAP servers, of course. More competition is coming, to be sure, but you're looking at a global marketplace that's so large that no single company could ever hope to own the whole of it. We're also successfully selling a service platform on top of WAP which delivers all the real-world features that carriers need. And then above that, we started supplying WAP applications about a year ago. We definitely believe that represents one of our greatest opportunities for the future. In fact, we're already enjoying a fair amount of success in Japan. We're one of only a handful of companies that have ever managed to sell big applications into the telecom space there. Hundreds of thousands of users are already using our personal information management calendar and address book.

And we're going to continue pursuing other such application opportunities aggressively. You may have heard that we just recently acquired a voice portal company. The main purpose is to enhance our application base with voice. One of the ways your phone is different from your PC is that your phone is primarily a voice device. And we actually see voice and WAP as flip sides of the same coin. Sometimes you want to hear about your calendar and sometimes you want to see it. So we're adding the voice dimension to an offering that's already proving very popular. And this again shows how the Net world is different from the PC world. There simply is no equivalent for this on the PC side.

Although, of course, voice capabilities are being added to PCs as well.

Naturally. But it's not the primary mode of operation. What I'm talking about is a little pocket device that you have in your hands when you're driving and you want to use voice commands to get at your Web data. The technology we've developed to help you do that is very impressive. You can do marvelous things by combining WAP and voice.

When do you think it will be possible to make the transition to more transaction-oriented applications that people can use to execute stock trades, pay bills and transfer funds?

We're actually seeing the first signs of that right now. Pricewaterhouse is shipping a full stock-trading application on WAP. And Amazon has a WAP-compliant order interface that costs me a lot of money already because every time I demo it, I end up buying a book. But I love that app because it embodies our vision for "m-commerce," which is what we call mobile commerce. Think of all the potential in that -- if you have an Amazon account, you're now able to buy a book with just two clicks on your phone.

Are there impediments in the current wireless infrastructure to deploying these kinds of applications?

You know, I wondered myself. But so far, Amazon hasn't hit any bumps in the road -- none whatsoever.

What do you see as being the killer app that will make WAP "must have" technology for the long haul?

You know, one of the things I learned about the Internet early on is that it doesn't really revolve around any single killer app. It's more like 100 killer apps. And that varies from one person to the next. I'm sure that for some portion of the population, Salon.com is a killer app. But then there are other people who are more focused on stocks. The Internet is more personal, and the contact points with individuals are constantly shifting.

What we've found is that e-mail and person-to-person messaging are by far the most popular apps in Japan, which is presently the most advanced market for our technology -- easily one and a half years ahead of the U.S. They're sending each other messages and replying PC-to-phone, phone-to-PC, phone-to-phone  you name it. The traffic is so heavy that we've had to aggressively upgrade all our servers over there to handle it all. In other parts of the world, we're finding that stocks and sports apps are what people are most attracted to. Some people would tell you that the ability to rebook flights and change itineraries is what's most important. And we're finding in Japan that games are also a very big deal.

What happens with the addition of GPS capabilities?

That's still about a year or two away, but it's going to be very big. Right now, the network knows where you are -- or at least what cell site you're in. So we already can create applications that leverage the fact that we know where you are within a half-mile radius. We know what city you're in and maybe even what block you're in. But with GPS, the phones will know exactly where you are. And that will revolutionize the types of applications we can deploy on a phone. Getting an exact location is an unbelievably powerful function. And I think we're just beginning to understand how you leverage that. But I assure you there's a lot more to it than simply delivering driving directions. We're already doing that.

The recurring theme in what you're saying seems to be that this technology is so fundamental that you really have no earthly idea of what people are going to do with it. People continue to surprise you.

Actually, I told my guys early in the life of the company that if we're not surprised by what we create, we're selling the company. Guess what? We're not selling.

• View blog reactions