Amidst a gloomy season for dotcom deaths, multiple layoffs, and more depressing headlines in the global information and communications technology (ICT) sector, some companies remain confident on the prospect for growth and recovery - specifically in the wireless technology realm.

Riding on the bandwagon on the rapidly increasing number of global mobile phone usage, newly-established wireless applications service provider (WASP) Mobile Arts, Inc. said last week it is firmly eyeing specific multiple industry sectors for interactive messaging service (IMS) and other valueadded applications like wireless email.

A WASP is a developer, hosting, and management solutions provider for wireless access technology.

Run by two information and communications technology veterans who joined forces to form the company, Mobile Arts executives told reporters in a news conference last week that they're focusing on the development of middleware while at the same time try to manage the complexity brought about by the combination of applications, networks, and devices.

Elmar M. Gomez, director of Mobile Arts told Infotech its platform -- running on the Open Source/Linux operating system (OS) - will effectively provide "progressively deeper" services to the transportation, financial, and retail and consumer sectors to enable them for interactive electronic messaging and marketing infrastructure.

However, Gomez declined to be specific, saying the partnerships with the unnamed organizations are currently being finalized -- but an announcement is forthcoming within a few weeks, he said.

The Mobile Arts director, formerly an executive of Nokia Telecommunications Phils., Inc. handling the global system for mobile communications (GSM) business relationship with wireless carrier Globe Telecom, claimed Linux OS is a "versatile" platform for meeting out Internet requirements like mailing, web servers, and fileserving. "It's a cost-effective choice and uses hardware efficiently," he said.

Currently, the Ayala Alabang, Muntinlupa-based WASP is working in tandem with wireless carriers, specifically digital cellular phone systems carriers like Smart Communications, Inc. and Pilipino Telephone Co. (Piltel).

Infotech learned that since late January, Mobile Arts offered Smart and Piltel a wireless complement webbased e-mail and a fully integrated address book feature which both companies have branded as "TextMail." Latest figures from Mobile Arts show there are 345,000 subscribers of TextMail.

Value-added messages like TextMail are priced at P2.50 for each message. Company executives said Wednesday they are forecasting the management of more than 23.5 million messages exchanged by yearend. Mobile Arts expects a yearend revenue of P11.4 million and P127 million by 2006.

"We are closely bridging the gap between personal computer (PC) and mobile phone users by offering wireless e-mail services for the country's GSM users," said Ramon G. Duremdes, Jr., Mobile Arts president.

The concurrent director and former head of Smart's strategic planning and business development department declared existing technology today supports cross-media messaging (where the sender can try to reach the message recipient using different media all at once). Duremdes said this "increases the profitability of receipt," adding "The recipient is empowere to choose which media to receive the messages based on criteria like the sender, subject, and time."

Investment

Meanwhile, Gomez revealed in an interview that company investments -- totalling P108 million over the next five years -- will mostly be spent on server and networking hardware, OS, and software application development costs.

Infotech learned the newly-formed WASP currently uses powerful servers running on Intel's Pentium III 1 gigahertz processors while the software code is "proudly Filipinocrafted -- using object oriented programming language and SQL database.

Mobile Arts' data operations is located within the Madrigal Business Park in Ayala Alabang (south of Metro Manila) while offshore servers are maintained in an undisclosed state in the US mainland.


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