OXFORD, United Kingdom-Despite the promotional efforts of developers and mobile operators, the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) was roundly condemned by industry observers as being “unfit for purpose” during most of last year. The technology suffered from all the ills associated with pushing an unstable product into an undefined market, together with users’ unfulfilled expectations that they could “surf the mobile Internet.”
Needless to say, the result was a marketing disaster. WAP technology became a widespread topic of derision and was held aloft as an example of how not to introduce new technology to a mass-market audience.
Having tried to push WAP up the near-vertical incline of user acceptance, the mobile industry seemingly withdrew during the latter part of last year to reassess its position. Most firms involved with WAP, although not all, have admitted last year was problematic, but claim the tide has now turned with serious lessons learned.
Major developer and advocate of WAP technology Openwave, the newly merged Phone.com and Software.com, said that last November was the turning point where the first wave of users began to appreciate what WAP could deliver in reality. The industry also came to a relatively common understanding of what WAP is and is not.
Nigel Oakley, Openwave’s Europe, Middle East and Africa marketing manager, maintained there are now some straightforward rules for WAP to be successful. “Usability is critical and an overriding factor,” he said. Those services that will thrive are those that provide useful information to people on the move, together with being easy to access, reliable and easy to understand.
“What we saw in the early days of WAP was a translation of Internet-style applications into the mobile environment. We know now that this doesn’t work, and there are some very good services becoming available now, such as local train timetables, that do not require the 20 to 30 key presses of old to find the required information.”
Looking forward, Oakley does not believe WAP developers or users should be too hopeful or concerned about the potential for General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology to provide a dramatic improvement. He said the promised data speed of GPRS is not necessarily the key to improving WAP acceptance.
“Today’s 9.6 kbps transmission over GSM provides a quicker handset `screen fill’ rate versus the data necessary to refresh a PC screen
using a 56 kbps fixed-line Internet connection,” Oakley said.
Oakley also claimed there is a drive within the mobile industry to dramatically reduce the connection time over existing circuit-switched infrastructure, which could mean new GPRS/WAP handsets will not necessarily be the highly desired items they are forecast to become.
This new-found realism is supported by U.K.-based market research firm Ovum. Analysts within the company, while claiming there remains a distinct lack of compelling WAP applications, are strongly advocating mobile operators must invest now for the longer term.
“We believe that a lot more will be heard this year about the type of WAP-based services that will become available. These will initially be targeted at the business users before flowing over to the consumer market. But we definitely believe mobile data services are going to happen,” said Michelle McKenzie, an analyst at Ovum.
However, European operators that have launched WAP services are still markedly reluctant to release evidence to support the business case. One of the earliest to enter the market, BT Cellnet, recently claimed its WAP subscribers are each generating 100 (US$147) more revenue per annum than non-WAP users. The company attributed this increase to call stimulation from the use of data services, which may mean data services are still only being used slightly, but at least they are prompting people to make voice calls.
The drive to increase the number of second-generation (2G) WAP applications might benefit from experience gained by NTT DoCoMo and its i-mode service. The business case established for this proprietary data service rewards content and application developers based on the success of their services.
The i-mode portal works at two levels. At one level, content developers receive no commission for any transactions that pass through the gateway, whereas at another, deeper level they do. This means the developer is highly motivated to build an application that pulls users further into the service and encourages them to purchase. It would appear to be Darwinian in nature, with only the most able and clever developers surviving.
The success of i-mode, albeit so far only within the Japanese market, has promoted NTT DoCoMo to consider launching services based on the technology in Europe using its new partner, the Dutch-based mobile operator KPN. However, this venture, which provides KPN with an i-mode license for Germany, Holland and Belgium, would appear to be too little and too late to achieve any meaningful success.
The WAP community would appear, after much blundering, to have finally realized its errors and is attempting to puts its house in order. “Maybe WAP shouldn’t have become a consumer buzz word. It’s only a piece of technology and, by itself, delivers nothing,” noted Openwave’s Oakley.
