Portal web site starts slowly
A new portal web site for mobile phone users has the potential to become extremely popular in Poland, but the beginning days may be slow, industry watchers said last week.
Publishing company Westa Druk toward the end of January launched Poland's first portal site designed specifically for access by mobile phone (www.mobile.net.pl or www.wap.mobile.net.pl). Adam Kozubowski, web master for the new site, said the site offers news, lottery results, telephone information, internet versions of weekly publication Angora, e-mail and weather information for about seven cities in Poland. The service, which is accessible from a specialized mobile phone with a screen, could eventually offer a wider range of products, such as dictionaries, peronalized news and even e-commerce.
Portal sites are web sites that allow the user to search for a wide range of information and connect to other sites through one main location.
Portals aimed at mobile phone users, however, are a fairly new concept, and analysts said it would take time for them to build traffic. "There are no users yet," said Zbigniew Lapinski, a regional telecom analyst with Deutsche Bank Research.
Although Kozubowski refused to say specifically how much Westa Druk had invested in the new site, or how much it will in the future, he did note that the company was adding content to the site almost daily.
The site has attracted 7,500 hits since coming on line, about half of which have come from within Poland. Kozubowski would not estimate how that number of hits could grow in the next year.
One hindrance to the development of web sites aimed at mobile phone users is equipment required. Currently only the more sophisticated and expensive models of mobile phones have wireless access to the internet and display screens, and most mobile phones in Poland do not.
Cellular provider Polkomtel (Plus GSM) also plans to introduce a web site for mobile phones at the beginning of March, as well as a phone that will be able to read internet displays. Kozubowski said he believes mobile phones with such services will soon become the norm, even in Poland. "By the end of the year, every new telephone will be able to read this," he said.
While optimistic, Leszek Bogdanowicz, president of internet investing group Internet Ventures, said he believed that such sites will have to wait a year or more before they begin building traffic because right now the required phones are too costly. "If it would be cheaper, it could be very successful," he said.
But the price for such phones is expected to deflate rapidly, and analysts noted that the potential exists for such a service to become widely used. "All mobile operators are preparing for portal sites," Lapinski said.
