Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

Tech meltdown over shadows Wapcon

Fakir Chand in Bangalore

The technology meltdown, triggered off from the Silicon Valley in the US and spread to Europe lately, has not only affected the multi-billion dollar IT industry globally, but also everything around it, including technology conferences, generic seminars or summits, and expositions on it.

The latest victim of the tech backlash was the two-day Wapcon 2001 international conference that was held during the last weekend in the hi-tech capital of India. The mood was anything but upbeat. The hype was missing.

Billed to have been a major event of the year in the convergence area, the second annual conference generated hardly any interest, leave alone a positive response from the big players in the wireless arena, notably, Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, Siemens, and Alcatel as their presence was conspicuously absent.

Held at a time when spending in the wireless Internet technologies took a beating over the year, the seminars and tutorial sessions that were conducted as part of the hitech conference drew only half the crowd as against an overwhelming response in the first Wapcon that was organized around the same time last year, and which saw about 700 delegates participating then.

Even the exhibition, held along with the conference and touted to showcase the latest wireless technologies, products, and applications turned out to be a virtual flop as none of the leading players took space to put up their pavilions for the 300-odd delegates, majority of whom were from Bangalore itself.

As a result, the mini-exhibition turned to be a sham with only associated companies in the industry, mostly publishing houses such as Tata McGrew Hill, Jashubhai Interactive, Voice & Data, and the Bangalore-based Technology Media Group, a 24-hour satellite TV channel exclusively on the IT industry, put up their modest stalls to showcase their offerings.

The impressive presence of Jataayu Software Ltd, the 100 per cent subsidiary of the host company, Integra Micro Systems, was not only prominent, but also face-saving as no other IT company, be it in hardware or software, and dealing in the wireless domain, showed any interest to participate in the exhibition.

Nokia had a notional presence through its distributor displaying its latest mobile gizmos.

Compaq had showcased its latest offerings in the domain such as its iPAQ pocket PC, which is Internet and wireless enabling. Contrary to the claims made by the organisers on the eve of the conference, only 70-80 delegates turned out from outside Bangalore, and just a couple of them from abroad, as they were billed to speak at the seminars/tutorials.

Admitting that the tech meltdown had a reeling impact on the conference, Jataayu managing director Mahesh Jain told the rediff.com here that the objective of Wapcon 2001 was to keep up the momentum that was spearheaded last year in the wireless technologies which have come to interface with the Internet and the Web.

"It is a learning process. It is the only kind of platform in the country that brings experts together in the wireless domain, including developers and users for exchanging information/data on the latest trends and their applications in such diverse devices as WAP, PDAs Bluetooth, cellular, voice over IP, Internet telephony, and video streaming," Jain stated.

Organised by India's Wireless Internet Initiative, a non-profit association formed to create awareness about the wireless application protocol, Bluetooth, and other associated Internet technologies, Wapcon deliberated on the future of WAP architecture, 3G technologies, and emerging high bandwidth applications such as multimedia messaging.

Barring two noted speakers in the field, viz., Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala of TeNeT group from IIT Madras, and Dr S Sadagopan, director of the Bangalore-based IIIT-B, who delivered their keynote addresses on the inaugural day, the rest of the sessions were handled by experts in the respective field.

"Though wireless web made a splash year ago, making people to sit up and take notice, mobile Internet is yet to become a reality in India, thanks to the absence of sufficient bandwidth, spectrum availability, and high cost of its access."

"However, the world over, wireless Internet has come to stay, what with over 10 million people getting hooked it in such a short span. It has become as much an accepted fact as Internet connection to a PC," Jain affirmed.

As one of the leading software developing countries, India is placed ideally to tap the immense potential of the convergence communications by developing a plethora of applications and products that run on Bluetooth, iMode, VoiceXML, and other user technologies.

An independent study on WAP, conducted by a leading European research organization, has projected that by 2004, one-third of Europe will regularly use mobile phones to access Internet services.

According to analysts, mobile phones will become the dominant means of accessing the Internet hereafter, when web-enabling phones will make up for about 80 per cent of the unit volume of Internet appliances.

Giving an overview, TCS business analyst M Krishna Kumar said wireless Internet and pervasive computing are the new paradigms that were emerging both as a complementing and a potent alternative to the wired Internet and fixed computing.

The need to rely on mobile links to receive or deliver services on the fly has become very compelling.

"With the world's digital communications infrastructure growing rapidly, the focus is shifting from fixed computing to the provisioning of diverse array of networks, services, and devices that allow access to data, voice and video. Wireless Internet and mobile computing are evolving as the classic disruptive technologies that provide an alternative to mainstream and traditional mechanisms," Kumar recalled.

Money

Business News

Tell us what you think of this report