Mobile phone distributor Hong Kong Communications Equipment (HKC) is entering the mobile commerce market next month by launching a portal that will allow users to buy film tickets and compact discs.
The new service was unveiled yesterday at a demonstration held by HKC and Nokia, which last year began shipping phones embedded with mobile wallet capabilities for storing a user's credit card and shipment information for buying online.
According to HKC, handsets from all manufacturers will be able to access the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) portal. However, Nokia's latest phones are the only ones now able to store such information so it will not have to be keyed in at each purchase or kept on a merchant's servers.
Services on the HKC portal will include Broadway Cinema bookings, concert tickets and CDs from Silver Planet Productions, and HKC's software and mobile-phone products. Hubert Chan Chung-yee, HKC chairman and chief executive said the company planned to add train and ferry tickets, charity donations and other items.
Most of Hong Kong's six mobile phone operators offer some form of commerce over their wireless application protocol (WAP) portals, and all handsets on the market include WAP browsers, although the level of purchasing and WAP surfing is thought to be low.
Still, the potential for m-commerce in Asia is large, according to some research companies.
International Data Corp estimated m-commerce across the region, excluding Japan, totalled US$557 million last year and might be worth US$12 billion annually by 2005.
