Filed at 2:32 p.m. ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - It's the geek's dream commute: stand on the crowded subway and hold a strap with one hand while using the other hand to check the weather, review e-mail, play a mindless game or two and lay a wager on the latest match in the World Cup.

The wireless Internet has long been something of an enigma -- its usefulness is obvious in theory, but in practice Web sites tailored to wireless platforms have been slow, hard to read, often uninformative and always difficult to use properly.

But changes are in the air, as it were, with wireless phone carriers rolling out high-speed networks and phones with color screens, and manufacturers of personal digital assistants (PDAs) adding built-in wireless functions to their devices.in the United States will offer Internet access through their phones at speeds of three to 15 times those offered even six months ago, when cellular data was transmitted anywhere from 9.6 kbps (kilobits per second) to 14.4 kbps.

Toshiba Corp. (6502.T), on its own and through Audiovox Corp. (VOXX.O), offers two personal digital assistants that can access the Internet wirelessly -- one via cellular networks and one via wireless local area networks, popular in offices.

And in perhaps the biggest sign that the wireless Web is getting to a point where companies think they can use it for real business, Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT.O) MSN service signed a deal with Verizon Wireless in late May to jointly develop wireless applications and services.

But acceptance of such wireless services is still minimal. According to comScore Media Metrix, of the 85.1 million home Web users in the fourth quarter of last year, 3.5 million accessed the Internet through their phone, while only 761,000 went online through their PDA.

TREND STARTING NOW

The problem is one of usability, according to Jakob Nielsen, principal of the Nielsen Norman Group and one of the best-known experts on the subject of Web design.

``I completely believe in this trend ... it's a trend that's just going to be starting this year,'' Nielsen said of the move toward more in-depth applications on wireless platforms.

Nielsen said two things are necessary before wireless catches on as a significant business platform -- advances in the design of the hardware and advances in content.

``It doesn't work for anything where you have a substantial amount of information'' at the moment, he said, though the hardware advances are coming now, with the content a year or so behind, though even then it will still be lacking.

``I think the only point where I am pessimistic is purely on the quality of the initial services,'' he said. ``In the first year, it's going to be misery, it's going to be clunky.''

GAMES THE KEY?

While Nielsen is of the ``build-it-and-they-will-come'' theory, some believe the new generation of phones and phone/organizer combination devices won't materialize until handset makers see demand, and demand in turn will not exist without having the applications first.

Games are among the applications seen as most promising to sell the new hardware, especially at a time when traditional video game sales are setting new records and interactive entertainment becomes as mainstream as movies and music.

``This is really sort of the launch year for wireless gaming,'' Mitch Lasky, chief executive of wireless gaming company Jamdat Mobile, told Reuters at the video game industry's annual Electronic Entertainment Expo last month.

Lasky estimated the total potential market for downloadable applications on cell phones is no more than $5 per year per handset, assuming each application is priced in a range of 10 cents to $1.

He said that in a trial offering with Verizon Wireless earlier this year in San Diego, total sales were about five times expectations.

No less a mainstream technology company than Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW.O) also came to the gaming show to show off the mobile version of its Java platform, which it claims will be on at least 75 million phones worldwide by year's end.

Sprint PCS Group (PCS.N) will offer Java phones on its high-speed network later this year, and was also promoting gaming at the show, though the company concedes one of its biggest challenges is getting game publishers on board in the first place.

``We've got to be a relevant development environment for them,'' Chip Novick, a Sprint PCS vice president, told Reuters.