Forrester Research: Mobile ecommerce boom expected in Europe.

More than 219 million people, or one-third of the European population, will access Internet services using mobile phones by 2003, according to Forrester Research. Nearly 120 million Europeans already use mobile phones and they exchange more than 2 billion short message service (SMS) text messages each month. Ninety percent of ecommerce executives interviewed for the report, "Europe_s Mobile Internet Opens Up", plan to launch sites that will be accessible with mobile phones. These sites will offer news and personalised content and will allow consumers to buy and sell stocks, book holidays and bid at auctions using their mobile phones. As current site content can be easily rendered in wireless application protocol (WAP), the new services are expected to cost providers an average of only USD87,000 (EUR86,226) per year. This is equivalent to six percent of the current average budget for a European ecommerce site. Although Forrester estimates that a third of European mobile Internet providers (MIPs) will initially offer a closed, pay-per-use service to their customers, the pressures of a wildly competitive market will force MIPs to provide open access to all users by 2002. Forrester interviewed 50 European ecommerce executives and representatives of 25 mobile operators that service more than three quarters of European mobile phone users.