Excite launches mobile Web portal

From...

May 3, 2000
Web posted at: 8:48 a.m. EDT (1248 GMT)

by James Niccolai

(IDG) -- Excite@Home this week launched a wireless Web portal in the U.S. where users can access a range of content and services via an Internet-enabled cell phone.

Called Excite Mobile, the service includes much of the content that is already available through Excite@Home's existing portal for PC users, including services such as e-mail, address books and a calendar, as well as information like news and weather reports, Excite@Home officials said in a statement.

Excite claims its wireless portal includes the first customizable home page for mobile users, allowing them to shift items to the top of the site menu or remove items altogether. The ability to "personalize" the service in this way is critical given the slower Net access speeds and smaller screen sizes of mobile phones, Rob Wilen, a senior director for wireless at Excite@Home, said in the statement.

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The portal specialist will face competition from a small army of Internet firms busily retooling content for an expected explosion in the number of users who access the Net from their cell phone. Its rivals will include Yahoo, America Online (AOL), Microsoft, and even database vendor Oracle, which launched a portal for mobile consumers in January.

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While the wireless Web may still be at an embryonic stage in the U.S., having a wireless portal is an essential step for Excite@Home if the company wants to stay competitive with its portal rivals moving forwards, said Barry Parr, a director with market research company International Data Corp. (IDC) in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Allowing users to customize their mobile home pages is an important feature, Parr said in a phone interview. He noted that Excite@Home's rivals also offer ways for users to "personalize" the content they access.

"The challenge is that the interface on a cell phone is so poor that anything you can do to reduce the number of keystrokes and the number of menus is a plus," Parr said.

The wireless Web as a whole in the U.S. is still "extremely primitive," according to Parr. "It concerns me how much we are hyping it at this stage," he said.

Market research firm The Yankee Group predicts that 30 percent of all cell phones sold in the U.S. this year will be equipped with a Web browser. Observers expect the figure to be even higher in Europe and Japan, where wireless Internet services have been widely available for some time. Excite@Home already operates similar wireless portal services in the U.K., Canada and Japan, company spokeswoman Karen Snow said in a phone interview.

To use Excite Mobile, users enter mobile.excite.com on their phone browser and then bookmark the site for future use. Users can personalize their mobile portal service on their PC via mobile.excite.com.

Excite Mobile's location-based services, which include yellow pages and white pages, driving directions, and an ATM (automated teller machine) locator, are provided by AirFlash Inc.

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Get ready for Excite@Home 2000
(PC World Online)
Excite@Home plans phone, wireless Web access
(Network World Fusion)
New voice portals trumpet the arrival of Internet-via-phones
(The Industry Standard)
Who will be your phone's portal?
(PC World Online)
Virgin Mobile to launch MP3 mobile phone
(IDG.net)
Mobile giants push Web-shopping via phone
(PC World Online)
Wireless data access via cell phone to skyrocket
(Computerworld)
Oracle gears up for wireless challenge
(IDG.net)

Excite@Home
Yahoo
America Online
Oracle

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