Friday, July 11, 2003
wi-fi growth
Reuters reports that there will be strong wi-fi growth in the next 5 years, with hotspots in the asia-pacific region growing the fastest.
While North America has the largest number of hot spots currently, with 12,400, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to overtake North America by 2008, according to a report to be released later on Thursday by technology research firm Allied Business Intelligence. The report refers only to commercial hot spots, and excludes free, publicly accessible locations such as in parks and on college campuses.
While sitting at a lovely cafe in the Morningside Heights neighbourhood, I realised that each of these cafes could provide free wi-fi access just to get people to stick around longer and spend more money. Whats $40 p/m on broadband if you can get a bunch of new customers to bring in their laptops and hang around. In this "business model," wi-fi access would simply be an add-on to induce "stickiness." I have not really seen any viable business models around wi-fi just yet. For all we know, wi-fi could simply go the way of the Internet itself, where the core model doesn't necessarily make money but layers built on top will.
While North America has the largest number of hot spots currently, with 12,400, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to overtake North America by 2008, according to a report to be released later on Thursday by technology research firm Allied Business Intelligence. The report refers only to commercial hot spots, and excludes free, publicly accessible locations such as in parks and on college campuses.
While sitting at a lovely cafe in the Morningside Heights neighbourhood, I realised that each of these cafes could provide free wi-fi access just to get people to stick around longer and spend more money. Whats $40 p/m on broadband if you can get a bunch of new customers to bring in their laptops and hang around. In this "business model," wi-fi access would simply be an add-on to induce "stickiness." I have not really seen any viable business models around wi-fi just yet. For all we know, wi-fi could simply go the way of the Internet itself, where the core model doesn't necessarily make money but layers built on top will.
