eBay and InPhonic, announced Wednesday a new monthly service that among other things, will let people more easily bid on an item using their cell phones.
The auction Web site already sends wireless e-mail to a small percentage of its customers who have signed up for its "eBay Anywhere," a service that sends alerts to wireless devices when an auction is about to close or when someone has been outbid. But those customers could not reply to the messages and submit a new bid. For $2.99 a month, they now can, the companies said.
The service, dubbed " Wireless Rebidding," will be available to anyone with a cell phone capable of both sending and receiving wireless messages. The technique, known as two-way messaging, is available on just about any cell phone sold now. Wireless rebidding also works with Internet-enabled cell phones that use the Wireless Application Protocol or WAP, the companies said.
One thing eBay has working in its favor, however, is the small percentage of its customers who"ve already signed up for the wireless e-mail alert programs. One of their main complaints, according to a source familiar with eBay"s plans, was that customers couldn"t act on the wireless alerts they received. Instead, they had to find a laptop or personal computer.
But for the most part, use of cell phones for anything other than making a telephone call has been nearly nonexistent in the United States. The numbers might seem significant--about 350 million wireless e-mails were dispatched last year, according to most estimates. But they pale in comparison to Europe, where between 30 billion and 35 billion wireless messages leap between cell phones every months.