OXFORD, United Kingdom-A survey of U.K. businesses has found more than 70 percent have no intention of implementing the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) in the near future, while just 15 percent have already done so, and only 14 percent have plans to. According to Rhetorik, which conducted the study with nearly 5,000 business people in the United Kingdom, it appeared to prove WAP is seen by information technology decision makers as a consumer gimmick, and the business benefits are not clearly understood.
The survey found although everyone is talking about m-commerce, relatively few are actually doing anything about it. The figures show only 29 percent believe their company will implement some form of m-commerce, while 42 percent think not, and 29 percent simply do not know what their firm has planned.
Rhetorik said the key factors slowing implementation of m-commerce appear to be a lack of maturity of the technology (64 percent), the low number of customers using WAP-enabled mobile phones and personal digital assistants (58 percent), and the low level of in-house skills surrounding this technology (32 percent).
