Boxman, Motorola Pact On Service

OSLO-The pact between European online retailer Boxman and mobile communications company Motorola to allow consumers to buy music via a speech-recognition phone service (BillboardBulletin, Feb. 4) is among the first to broaden the concept of E-commerce to include mobiles.
But this "M-commerce" offer-expected to debut in the U.K. in the spring-as yet only deals with the distribution of physical product by Boxman, not with digital downloads. The service, currently in a trial period, is not restricted to Motorola phones; it will also work on other mobiles and landlines.
Boxman operates eight localized sites in the U.K., Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Boxman commercial director Christopher Codrington says, "The [new] service will be launched to the U.K. market first and then rolled out across Europe this summer." He adds that Boxman will start up in Italy and Spain in the second and third quarter of this year, respectively. No executives have yet been named to oversee those affiliates.
The speech-recognition mobile phone offer adds to a variety of other means of ordering CDs from Boxman, including Internet on PC, interactive cable and satellite TV, and wireless application protocol-based (WAP) mobile phones.
Through Boxman's relationships with radio stations in the countries where it operates, customers can also find out which songs are being aired by those stations and order a CD containing those songs. The stations link their playlists to Boxman's catalog, enabling listeners to dial a supplied number on their mobile phones and browse through the playlist. The service can help the listeners refine the search in order to identify the music they hear.
Says Boxman CEO Tony Salter, "Boxman has deliberately pursued a platform-independent strategy to enable us to create a strong foothold in each nascent and promising market. The M-commerce market has vast potential, and we want customers to be able to buy music on impulse-whether through their WAP mobile phones or through a simple voice call."
At Motorola, E-commerce director Laurence John says the firm is committed to enabling Internet merchants to extend their services to mobile users. "With the development of WAP mobile handsets and voice Internet browsing," he says, "it's important for merchants to be able to develop services easily and quickly so to reach the mass consumer market."
Adds Codrington, "The system is as secure as any interactive telephone system. Boxman [doesn't] retain credit card details, and there are no third parties involved, as the customer goes directly through to the Boxman site to purchase online. Eventually we will have the "wallet' technology in place, which will mean that credit card details are secured on the consumer's SIMM [single inline memory module] card."
Music content is not seen as a component of the strategic alliances that AOL Europe made with mobile communications giants Nokia and Ericsson in early February. According to AOL Europe's Hamburg-based corporate communications director, Frank Sarfeld, "The distribution of music over mobile phones is as yet limited because of the low bandwidth [9,600 kilobits per second]. The agreements we just signed concern marketing, research, and technology."
AOL Europe, a 50/50 joint venture between AOL and Bertelsmann, says it will be developing news, E-mail, and online retailing applications for mobile phones from both Nokia and Ericsson. A wireless technology, branded as "always-on," will allow consumers to know whether their friends' phones are on and will enable the transmission of instant, Internet-style messages. Sarfeld adds that there is "absolutely nothing" to reports that Bertelsmann is looking to sell its shares in AOL Europe.