LONDON-The Wireless Application Protocol Forum announced 23 companies have joined the organization since May, and it recently expanded and elected new officers to its board of directors.
Formed last summer by Ericsson Inc., Motorola Inc., Nokia Corp. and Unwired Planet Inc., the WAP Forum’s goal is to create a worldwide open standard for wireless Internet access on handheld devices. General membership was opened in January. Thirty-seven companies became members by May. With the additions since then, about 60 international companies-including carriers, handset manufacturers and network equipment providers-have announced their support of the WAP-specification process and have become members.
This new membership makeup is reflected in the new board of directors. In addition to the founding members, the new board of directors is made of up executives from SBC Communications Inc., IBM Corp., Alcatel and Australia’s Telstra, among other companies.
Chuck Parrish, Unwired Planet’s executive vice president and newly elected board chairman, said the diverse membership roster marks the organization’s evolution.
“I don’t think the numbers are the issue,” he said. “We do have more than we expected to at this point … (but) what we’re seeing is a more well-rounded group of people representing the industry … What you’ve got here is a good, solid cross-section of carriers, and then you’ve got virtually every handset manufacturer there is, and then equipment manufacturers.”
This is required for the next step in the WAP Forum’s progress, Parrish said.
“It’s product. Late this year and early next, you’re going to see handsets on the market and carriers deploying on their networks,” he said. “The WAP 1.0 spec put in place the things necessary to deploy. Now we’ve moved from the spec to people announcing trials and deploying on their network. Looking forward six months to a year from now, you’ll see carriers with real applications in place working on real handsets.”
