HONG KONG (02/01/2000) - In Hong Kong, one of the world's pioneering markets for mobile phones, the only thing hotter than the recent flood of Internet startups is the latest handset hardware.
In gritty shopping districts and glittering malls all over the territory, customers cluster around phone shops to look at the new models just as they often do around stock-market monitors in the windows of brokerage offices.
The crowds aren't just window-shopping, either. Inside the stores, they wait in long lines to buy handsets or sign up for service. In at least one large store, customers take numbers and sit in a waiting area. When they get to the counter, they may find out that the hot new phone they want, such as the Nokia 7110, is already back-ordered.
Most of these eager shoppers already have phones. More than half of Hong Kong's 6.7 million residents were mobile-phone users in October 1999, according to the local government's Office of the Telecommunications Authority. That reflects nearly 800,000 new handsets since December 1998, the agency reported.
And just as at brokerage offices on a big day at the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, the crowds gathered at mobile-phone stores come from nearly every walk of life.
Inevitably, the twin fascinations have come together, and now a pair of technologies is making it easier than ever for Hong Kongers to carry the market with them.
One reason the Nokia 7110 draws a crowd is that it is one of a new generation of phones that use Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). The new standard lets users access the Internet through a keypad and a two-inch display.
With WAP, users can send e-mail, view information, and even carry out transactions on their handsets. And if Hong Kongers can do it with a handset, reasoned U.S. discount brokerage Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. and mobile service provider SmarTone Mobile Communications Ltd., they will.
The companies last week announced a WAP-based stock trading service. With the launch of the new service, users won't have to change chips in their WAP-enabled telephones as new features become available -- the new services will be added to the WAP site and immediately available to all users.
Success of the service depends on penetration of WAP in Hong Kong, but Christina Hui, Schwab's Hong Kong-based regional general manager for Asia Pacific, is optimistic. "Users like to upgrade (replace) their phones," Hui says, in a bit of understatement. "Next time when they upgrade their phones, they'll have WAP phones."
In fact, Hui estimated that among Schwab's customers and potential customers in Hong Kong, 60 to 80 percent will have WAP by the second quarter of this year, when the service will be rolled out.
The appeal of a sharp new handset is not the only thing that lures Hong Kong people to buy the latest thing, however, Hui added.
"Hong Kong is a tech-savvy market," she said. "Hong Kong investors are also technically knowledgeable."
Another trade-by-phone service announced last week keeps its technical advances under wraps, but it may represent a valuable breakthrough in polyglot Hong Kong.
The service, from local brokerage Tai Fook Securities Co. Ltd., allows users to simply pick up their handsets, call Tai Fook, and give their trading directions in one of the territory's three most common languages: Cantonese, Mandarin, or English.
An interactive voice response system developed by Hong Kong-based IVRS (International) Ltd. lets the customers call in any time of the day or night, seven days a week. They will also be able to get daily research reports, statements, and product listings on the phone, as well as ordering information from the company in the form of e-mail or fax.
Asked about the hefty price tag on one WAP model -- nearly US$500 -- a local customer at one packed store expressed the optimism that this recovering city's fledgling Internet industry has sprouted.
He shrugged. "That's nothing in Hong Kong. People here have a lot of money."