A Small Window of Opportunity for Wireless Investors

Tomorrow's cell phones (and Palm Pilots, GameBoys and MP3 players) will be wired for high-speed Internet. But that doesn't mean they'll access the same graphics-heavy Internet that you've got on your computer right now. Those tiny little handset view screens make that impractical.

So tomorrow's wireless killer apps will be things that can be cooked down to concise alphanumerics. Cyberporn is out, in other words, and real-time stock trading, instant messaging and interactive coupons are headed for liftoff.

To understand how this changes things, pretend you run a restaurant in New York City. Because cell phones send out signals that pinpoint a user's location, you'll soon be able to post 15%-off coupons on every handset within a 10-block radius. ...