By Zack Medicoff

WHEN YOU THINK OF YOUR WIRELESS BROWSER, IT’S PROBABLY E-MAIL,MOVIE listings and weather information that first pop to mind. But if you want to laugh, kill some time or just be entertained, where do you look?

Andy Nulman knows all about instant diversions, and he’s planning to make afortune at it. The founder of Montreal’s Just for Laughs comedy festival and a former television producer and author, he’s also president of Airborne Entertainment, oneof Canada’s leading-edge wireless content companies.

Nulman started Airborne after having relinquished his comedy festival duties to create Eyeball Glue, an Internet consulting company, in October 1999. In February 2000 he refined his vision toward providing laugh-it-up content-morphing his business into theFunniest.com and its wireless sphere,TheFunniest ToGo.

“The Web was going through a very tough period.We saw the wireless component had a very specific business model and some serious players.That’s where the buzz was coming from,” he said.

That realization resulted in the development of Airborne Entertainment in November 2000. Now with 13 networks and 60 channels, users can engage in wireless gaming, entertainment, comedy and soon, wireless gambling. According to research firm IDC Canada, the wireless Internet will grow 144 per cent between 2000 and 2004 and Nulman boasts a 90 per cent share in the North American wireless market.

He believes traffic is moving towards “edutainment” and gaming channels, destinations with highly interactive content. His latest goal is to adapt popular comic strips like Garfield and Foxtrot to the wireless platform.

“You can’t replicate a comic strip on the phone just yet, and it doesn’t work that well on a Palm. But we can do short-form games that work really well,” he said.

For example, he points to the wireless game based on the headline character from the comic strip Adam@Home. In Café Adam, users must fill the workaholic stay-at-home dad with javas before his head explodes.

“The challenge is to make the content compelling for the small screen size and limited visual element. If you make the game or the content quick enough, people are going to accept it,” Nulman said.

With a micro-billing platform, gaming programs can add anywhere from a few cents to a couple of dollars to a subscriber’s monthly cellphone bill. Airborne’s services were still in free-trial mode in early July, but Nulman said it’s quickly changing to a pay-to-play model. He expects to charge users between one and two dollars per month.

Nulman said cellphone users have not traditionally paid for content, and will likely be reluctant to do so. “But things are going to change and all wireless content is going to be paid for,” he said. The great thing about the mobile space is that people pay on a daily basis right now [for access], so why wouldn’t they continue to pay if you make it worth their while?”

Games anywhere
Fredrick Ghahramani is also ready to sign users up on his gaming channels. The managing director of Air Games Wireless, a Vancouver-based company that originally offered quick-fix wireless games like tic tac toe and blackjack on major wireless carriers in North America and Europe, he is currently inking deals in Asia.

But Ghahramani said the real sell is in multi-player programs like WAP War, where users compete against other Canadians and “nuke” their opponents. Eight thousand gamers are limited to seven turns per day, each costing 10 cents per turn.

“The challenge now is, how do we increment those costs without causing a lot of backlash and without motivating users to throw their cellphones away?” he said. “I don’t know the right answer, but I do know that we have to take really slow steps and implement changes very slowly.That way the mindset of the consumer isn’t adversely affected.”

He said role-playing games will be the next big wireless gaming area, especially as they don’t require slick graphics. “It’s engaging because it taps into the user’s psyche. Even though the capacity is limited and the look and feel aren’t so great, it still inspires some form of imagination.”

Michael Moskowitz, president of Palm Canada, also believes that users will pay for some content. His company offers the MyPalm Portal, a wireless network that lets Palm users shop, play games on the Airborne channels, review stock quotes and receive daily news bites.

“You have to make sure the content is really high value and the customers want it.”

But he also realizes the frustrations around small screen size, limited graphics and slow download times. He said the only solution is to upgrade technologies, something that should occur in late 2001 when next-generation cell models creep into the marketplace. Moskowitz is pinning his hopes on the improved speed and access afforded by advanced network technology that he said will be available by the end of next year.

Nevertheless, others, including Air Games’ Ghahramani, remain skeptical. “Third-generation technology is not going to happen by 2003,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to be there for a while because of the economics involved.”

W E B C O N T E N T
Airborne Entertainment http://www.airborne-e.com
Air Games Wireless http://www.airgames.ca
IDC Canada http://www.idc.ca
Palm Canada http://www.palm.com