LOCAL wireless services start-up Mobile Arts Inc. on Tuesday disclosed plans of investing an estimated P108 million over the next five years to deliver wireless interactive messaging and value-added services in the Philippines.

Early this year, Mobile Arts signed exclusive partnership with Smart Communications and Pilipino Telephone Co. The company (formerly known as Mariex Inventures Corp.) now provides both local mobile phone operators the mobile e-mail service called TextMail. MobileArts officials said that the service now has over 340,000 subscribers after only five months. The company sees subscribers hitting 1 million by the end of 2001.

Asked what the killer application will be for the much-hyped mobile commerce revolution, Mobile Arts president Ramon Duremdes Jr. told INQ7.net: "TextMail. TextMail kills time and saves time," Duremdes said.

"For many local users, the mobile phone is their only e-mail device," Duremdes added.

Smart and Piltel subscribers are now able to text e-mail messages from their mobile phones to a computer.

While Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) has received a lot of attention, officials of admitted that WAP has been overhyped.

"That's why we didn't focus initially on WAP services," Elmar M. Gomez, director of Mobile Arts, told INQ7.net.

He said that while the company believes in the future of WAP services, their business is based on a per-use model, and the Philippines remains the text-messaging capital of the world.

"SMS (short message service or text messaging) will still be the standard platform for mobile services in the Philippines for the next five years," said Mylo C. Bonifacio, Mobile Art's corporate market business unit head.

Bonifacio said that WAP usage will increase as handsets become cheaper and services more affordable, particularly now that the always-on GPRS (general packet radio service) wireless technology is available. GPRS handsets, however, are still scarce and is only expected to really start taking off next year. After all, even first-generation WAP has not taken off as fast as the hype projected, in the Philippines as well as other countries.

A survey by research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres Interactive (TNS Interactive) estimates that 26.5 percent of the adult population in the Philippines has a mobile phone, of which 3.5 percent have WAP function.

This ranks the country 7th both in mobile phone ownership and WAP phone ownership among the eight countries surveyed in Asia Pacific, according to the results of the study. The TNS Interactive Asia Pacific M-Commerce Report was undertaken across 8 countries in the Asia Pacific region between December 2000 and February 2001. A total of 8,164 adults aged 15-65 have been interviewed via telephone. The countries surveyed include Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand.

Gomez explained that TextMail allows Filipinos to conveniently remain connected to friends and relatives abroad, even while on the go.

In the future, Mobile Arts will support "cross-media" messaging or unified messaging, which would allow messages to traverse any device, platform, and format.

The company also intends to "custom-fit" mobile messaging for corporate clients.

"There is a universal need of people to be connected while on the move. No wonder mobile phone users worldwide have been growing at an extensive rate. Based on estimates, global mobile users outnumber desktop PCs, with estimates about 772 million mobile phone users versus 400 million PCs. In Asia Paficic alone, there are now 233 million subs, and rising to 609 million by 2005," Duremdes said.

The company projects to earn over P11.4 million in revenues by yearend. In a separate interview, however, Duremdes clarified that the company will only see a return on investments after three years.

By 2006, the company expects over P127 million revenues.

Meanwhile, Gomez said that most of the P108-million investment would be spent on servers.

"At least P90 million will go to the purchase of hardware (servers) for storage of information, redundant systems and capacity," Gomez said.

The company has coughed up at least P 5 million for the initial paid-up capital, Duremdes said.

Mobile Arts uses Linux-based systems running on Pentium-powered machines. It now maintains operations in Muntinlupa City, Alabang.