3G has promising future in Asia Pacific: Analyst

3G has promising future in Asia Pacific: Analyst

SINGAPORE (AFP): The Asia Pacific region has all the
ingredients for third-generation (3G) wireless phone services to
flourish, according to a leading industry analyst.

But telecoms operators and phone vendors could prove an
obstacle, Greg Tarr, chief investment officer with Asian venture
capital firm M-Werks, told AFP on the sidelines of the three-day
Internet World Asia conference which opened here Wednesday.

"Asia has all the right things going for it," Tarr said.

He cited the region's high base of installed mobile phone
users, strong growth rates, a young population with ample
disposable income in many countries and an ability to adopt new
technologies.

But for 3G to flourish, it will require phone vendors and
telecoms operators to work together to map out a strategy,
learning from the failure of wireless application protocol
technology (WAP), he said.

"I think that on one hand, the handset makers have a
responsibility to market with what they can deliver, and to
deliver on time, but on the other hand, the telecoms operators
also have to take control of the marketing," Tarr said.

"There is a need to have an overall strategy that works
quickly and that means not trying to develop everything inhouse."

The 3G system allows dramatically faster mobile applications
than those currently possible, including video communication
using mobile phones and high-speed Internet access, but
interoperability issues remain among phone makers and telecoms
operators.

The marketing hype for 3G has so far been low key compared
with that for WAP.

"I think that a lot of vendors were overhyping what they could
deliver (for WAP) and they kept slipping on the delivery
schedules in terms of handsets and available services," Tarr
said.

"There was a lot of backlash from the public because when they
went to the retail outlets to buy their mobile phones, it
couldn't live up to those expectations."

Tarr also saw the dotcom shakedown as "healthy" for the tech-
savvy region.

"It weeds out a lot of the third tier firms that have no
business being a corporation whatsoever. They have no business
plans, no seasoned management, so I think it's actually healthy,"
he said.

David Michael, Hong Kong-based vice president with Boston
Consulting Group, said the dotcom collapse was inevitable.

"It is what we might call the revolution eating their young,
which is the first new entities that arise out of a revolutionary
phase are very often replaced by something else," he said.

U.S. brokerage house Salomon Smith Barney said in a report
last month that the dotcom shakedown has not slowed the level of
Internet penetration or Internet-related applications and
businesses.

It said Internet growth continued to exceed its expectations
for the region.