You are a young start-up high technology firm, WhooHoo Wireless, LLC. WhooHoo has negligible capital and no real business organization beyond the small (but world-class) engineering team. Despite this, the team has developed an innovative personal communications device that leverages current wireless technology.

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You are a young start-up high technology firm, WhooHoo Wireless, LLC. WhooHoo has negligable capital and no real business organization beyond the small (but world-class) engineering team. Despite this, the team has developed an innovative personal communications device that leverages current wireless technology. This innovative product allows a customer to access the Internet via satellite communications-thereby a customer can theoretically access the Internet anywhere in the world. You are a global marketing group retained by a venture capitalist considering funding WhooHoo. You are asked to develop an in-depth strategy to market this product globally. The first step in this comprehensive strategy is to assess the marketplace, the industry, and global environmental business factors that may impact your rollout strategy. Consider regulatory and disposable income issues, among other factors and think about strategic partnering opportunities and threats.

The market outlook for Woo Hoo Wireless personal device is very bright. More than 50 percent of jobs are mobile-away from a physical office. In the United States, an average worker spends only two days in formal training programs. To date, over 500 million Web-enabled mobile phones have been shipped to customers. Multipurpose hand-held devices, such as PDAs and cellphones, will out sell laptop and desktop computers combined by 2005. The enterprise market for mobile computing is estimated at $30 billion
What is the reason for these estimates?Certain industries and jobs seem to be a natural fit for mobile learning and performance support. Examples include field technicians, doctors, sales executives, transportation specialists, security officers, law enforcement personnel, and students.
Mobile and wireless technology is being used in supply-chain management, sale force automation, inventory management, facilities management, point-of-care administration, law enforcement, and scientific data collection applications. Peer-to-Peer networks facilitate communication, collaboration, and resource sharing at the edge of the Internet--compared to the traditional client/server networking model.

Regulatory issues. States are also enacting tough new laws such as California SB 1386, which requires companies to notify residents of any actual or potential incident that threatens the "security, confidentiality or integrity" of private data. It's little wonder that security tops the list of concerns IT managers expressed about mobile devices; 91% worry about protecting the data on mobile devices, and 72% worry about the theft of mobile devices.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act included location information as Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI), along with time, date, and duration of a call, and the number dialed. Current regulation, however, does not specify what kind of customer consent-express prior consent to use (opt-in) or express prior consent not to use (opt-out)-is required for CPNI, except for information involved in completing a call and for a billing cycle, and how that information is to be obtained. The 1999 Wireless Communication and Public Safety Act (WCPSA or E911 Act) rectified this omission by requiring opt-in for location information used for any non-emergency purpose.
Several bills recently introduced in Congress to require opt-in consent specifically for location information have never made it to the floor. In addition, the E911 Act was specifically written to apply to mobile telephones, and the status of wireless devices that are not cellular telephones, such as mobile computers with IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN, is not clear.

The disposable income in Europe is steadily increasing in countries ...