By some estimates, today's 533 million Internet users will mushroom to over 1.4 billion by 2007 — a vast potential market for e-commerce-savvy companies. Favorably inclined toward expanding their online access to goods and services, these users are steadily migrating to wireless technology, such as data-enabled cell phones. Currently about 16% of Internet users, wireless users are projected to total nearly 57% of users worldwide by 2007.Even the United States, to date tradition-bound by its extensive fixed-line communications network, is shifting toward wireless means of communication. In 2002, Forrester Research speculated that within five years up to 2.3 million conventional phone subscribers will switch to wireless technology, resulting in an average of 2.2 wireless phones per U.S. household by 2007.What affects whether these mobile users will actually transact business using wireless technology? Where better to ask than in Hong Kong, where the mobile-phone penetration rate is close to 89% — an impressive 5.7
