To be sure, some US-based companies are still investing in the technology. Citigroup earlier this year said that one of its key technology investments in the near future will be in wireless. Meanwhile, eBay launched a new service this summer that lets customers bid on its auctions more easily from their wireless devices. Through the service, eBay customers who receive a wireless email notifying them that they've been outbid can up their bids by responding directly to the email over their wireless device. EBay did not return calls regarding how many customers are using the new mobile service. But at Wells Fargo, only 2,500 people signed up for wireless banking, though 3.2 million people actively use the company's online banking service. "This service was primarily adopted by a narrow segment of early adopters," company spokeswoman Wendy Grover said. Few have complained that it's ending, she said. That's not surprising, considering how expectations for mobile commerce have waned. Research firm IDC has significantly downgraded its outlook: last year, the firm said mobile commerce sales would amount to $2bn this year and $39bn in 2005. Today IDC predicts this year's m-commerce sales at about $500m, and $27bn in 2005. Customers are also showing less enthusiasm for mobile commerce, according to biannual surveys by A.T. Kearney, the consulting unit of Electronic Data Systems. Consumers' intent to make purchases using cellphones fell by about two-thirds in the last two years. In June 2000, 32 percent of cellphone users planned to make purchases; by January 2002, that number was down to just 1 percent. A.T. Kearney surveyed 5,600 cell phone users in Asia, the United States and Europe. "There's not going to be that huge jump in mobile commerce that you saw in e-commerce in 1997 and 1998," IDC analyst Waryas said. "I think there is definitely a market for it, but it's much, much different than what we thought it was going to be two to three years ago." As Laszlo, the Jupiter analyst, sees it, "there is real potential in the wireless world, but unlocking it is proving more difficult than the early entrants might have thought."
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