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the death of m-commerce and other thoughts

kevin laws has some interesting observations on the death of m-commerce titled whither m-commerce? which for the most part i agree with.

i've long said that the carrier that just provides the fastest wireless 3G pipe will be the winner, with the subtext being that the simply operate as a wireless ISP.

the one thing i don't agree with in kevin's article is that verizon will be the carrier to break this open, which is truly a shame. i concur that verizon has the best voice and data network in north america - but the problem is VzW wants to control every bit that flows over their network to handsets. this is at odds with their 3G wireless PC cards, which essentially do make them a fast wireless ISP.
why the difference in control of smartphones vs PCs?

one company here in north america that has followed the european/asian model with some success is zingy and notice that they are not compatible with verizon. the reason for this is that other carriers such as T-Mobile, Cingular, and AWS make it much easier to use the open wireless protocols that exist (e.g. SMPP and MMS) to deliver applications via "backdoor" means, and for the most part the carriers are fine with this. I've been trying to get clients to think along these lines, as it does provide a real opportunity here in the US, and a much more open channel for marketing outside of the BREW platform, which is a current darling among application developers because of the grand revenue split that exists.

however now that the BREW catalogs are getting saturated, BREW carriers are starting to be very picky about who they let onto their networks, and demanding a lot of the application developers that have established themselves there. so although BREW has been the gravy train of application developers for the last year, the pendulum is starting to swing.

so yes, IP-based applications that bypass WAP and the walled gardens are surely where the money is in the coming year in wireless. and yes, verizon has the best network to support this. let's hope they see the light and support the applications that can break open the business models for 3G in north america.