What is surprising, though, is the imbalance of business services when compared to consumer Internet services. The former boasts a long list of terms that can be easily reduced to acronyms, like application service providers (ASPs), Internet service providers (ISPs), managed service providers (MSPs), and Web hosting companies (WHCs). The latter, on the other hand, is mainly limited to ISPs like: AOL, MSN, and Earthlink. And as columnist Mimi Rosenheim points out in this month's "Corporate Strategist," the services provided by such companies are quickly becoming commodities.
To be inclusive and to keep up with media tradition of mentioning NTT DoCoMo whenever possible, i-Mode is one example of a consumer service success story—in Japan, at least. Those of us in the U.S. and other wirelessly repressed countries are wondering whether it's worth it to pay providers like Sprint an extra $10 per month to check our stocks while away from our desks. With the exception of day traders and financial professionals, how many times have mobile phone users initiated sudden stock trades after checking the latest quotes?
I should also mention the recent rash of bill payment services, like StatusFactory.com, that collect users' monthly bills and compile them into one statement. I can see why this might be valuable to someone who has trouble keeping track of bills each month, but with so many banks and credit card companies offering automated payments, most users don't need to venture far beyond their trusted financial institutions for this kind of service.
Getting Real
These examples point to the need for companies to see the bigger picture. The consumer services market is far from saturated. It's time to forget the elusive Holy Grail that is the killer app and focus on providing the killer service instead. We're seeing the early stages of this on music-centric sites like MP3.com and Listen.com, although limited selections and legal troubles have kept them from taking off into the mainstream.
An unlikely alliance may provide a more revolutionary offering: If the Napster-BMG deal goes well, we may soon see a subscription-based music service that caters to consumer preferences. Cable companies have toyed around with similar subscription services through cable radio, which lets customers tune in to channels of uninterrupted music, organized by theme. The problem with cable radio is that it's not much better than FM radio: Someone else picks the themes and the individual songs and broadcasts them to you. Plans like those that are being developed by Napster and BMG will let the customer organize music into custom channels and listen to any song at any time.
Go Beyond
We must be even more innovative than this. Downloading and listening to music while near your computer is one possibility, but think of tuning an Internet-enabled stereo to a channel you've created. Imagine asking your car radio to download and play that song you can't get out of your head. Looking further, we need to embrace convergence in the home environment. For a small fee, a device in the closet should tell us what the weather will be like outside. And the utility company should offer add-ons that let us log in to a site and monitor electricity and gas usage, and compare that to general ratings for our neighborhood, city, or state.
These are truly services that have the potential to change the way the world acts. How accustomed are we to listening to music someone else chooses for us? How often are we surprised by a utility bill that's higher than expected? Of course, critics will be quick to point out obstacles. The technology may be there in the form of wireless devices, small processors, and persistent connections, but the pieces are scattered. It's true that bringing them together won't be lucrative in the beginning, but this sort of innovation needs to be funded by research and development arms, not by executives looking for one-year business plans. The time to put the infrastructure in place is now, before the Internet becomes just another delivery network, locked in like cable and radio. Extend the effort and the opportunities will be wide open soon after.
Amit is editor in chief of Web Techniques magazine. You can contact him at [email protected].
