A study of voice and wireless commerce conducted by The Kelsey Group and ConStat Inc called "Wireless Commerce Monitor" claims this. Another study by the UK-based firm Engage and mobile Internet company Quios echoed this. As did another study by internet.com. The Wireless Commerce Monitor (WCM) study says that wireless users are more than open to receiving advertising on their phones, as long as it sponsors and gives them information such as traffic reports, news, weather, stocks, and e-mail, including promotional messages. According to it, almost 50 per cent of wireless users said that they would prefer an advertising-supported model to a monthly per use fee-based model.

Additionally, the study discovered that small business is warming up to the potential of wireless advertising. Some 12 months ago only eight per cent of them said they were interested in using wireless advertising. During the WCM survey, 30 per cent said that they were interested. The Engage study covered a trial SMS Alert Service during Euro Football in June 2000 - as part of which some 2.5 million messages were delivered to 30,000 cellphone users in 100 countries. Messages were sent to mobile owners whenever a goal was scored during the Euro football tournament or a match decision reached.

These alerts were sponsored by Sega DreamCast, Grolsch Beer and Sports.com. 500 of the wireless phone owners were researched by Harvey Research. And 79 per cent of them revealed that they were open to receiving wireless text advertising. An average 60 per cent recalled the three brand sponsors' names. The third survey to support the trend is internet.com's Wireless Services survey, which questioned 1,000 Internet pros.Eighty-six per cent of them said nyet to wireless advertising as it would intrude on their space; but 50 per cent of them said they would take it if it helped reduce the cost of their wireless service. So Indian handset owners, do not be surprised if one of these days, even your handset starts splurging out streams of advertising. It's the way the market is moving.

Boo.com back in business
Boo.com has come back from the dead. It simply refused to rot and become a cadaver. In its new avatar, which will go public on October 30, it will reemerge as a vertical-portal providing an entry point for international fashion consumers to global fashion retailers, manufacturers, catalogs, and magazines. The owners of boo.com, fashionmall.com, which acquired the domain name, trade mark and content of boo.com on June 2, also own outletmall.com and stylexpert.com, sites that act as hosts for third-party retailers.

Boo.com will be dependent on advertising and sponsorship as its main revenue model. Another revenue source is likely to be reselling consumer data that it will collect (in its earlier avatar it used to attract 500,000 visitors a day; that's a lot of data).

TV predicted to be main source of Net access in India
Television is being predicted as the primary source of Intenet access in poor India by US firms such as TeleCruz (it is headed by an Indian Kris Narayan). The company is working with Indian television makers such as Videocon and Onida to produce Internet ready TVs, which will suit Indians' pockets. A similar scenario is being predicted for Europe by Forrester Research. It says an indicator of this is the wide spread of pay TV in Europe. Pay television is evolving towards interactivity and 20 million of these TV viewers are scheduled to get that service this year in Europe.

Additionally, television is migrating towards digital broadcasting, which will offer 50 per cent of these TV viewers access to interactive digital television by 2005, Forrester says. The firms studied consumers in five European nations: Great Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The study concluded that there were four broad categories of consumers, based on the type of devices they own, labeling them `Boxed' and`Wired', `Leaning Forwards', `Laid-back Socializers', and `Digital Outcasts'. The Boxed and Wired consumers, own both a set-top box and online access at home. But they represent the smallest proportion of consumers, and are very focused on entertainment. The Leaning Forwards account for 17 per cent of consumers and are mostly men motivated by career and entertainment.

The Laid-back Socialisers have pay TV but no Internet access and accounted for 13 per cent of consumers, while Digital Outcasts make up 50 per cent of all consumers. Forrester says that only 25 per cent of all Europeans get online from their home PCs. Hence, the remaining 75 per cent of the population - the Laid-back Socializers and the Digital Outcasts - are likely to first access the Internet using their TV sets, as interactive digital television spreads.

The author is founder http://www.indiantelevision.com, India's cable, satellite and terrestrial television industry portal. Email: television@vsnl.com, television@hotmail.com