The news of WAP’s demise has been greatly exaggerated, according to the Wireless Application Protocol Forum.
The WAP Forum last week struck back against a report released by the Nielsen Norman Consulting Group downplaying the advantages of the wireless Internet technology. The report stated WAP usability was suffering and would continue to fail through this year. Leading the list of complaints against WAP were longer download times of data and Web pages and an uneven user interface.
“In my opinion, WAP stands for Wrong Approach to Portability,” said Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group. “Companies shouldn’t waste money fielding WAP services that nobody will use while WAP usability remains so poor. Instead, they should sit out the current generation of WAP while planning their mobile Internet strategy.”
The WAP Forum, which includes about 600 companies, said the report was bogus because it surveyed only 20 users and did not include current WAP users in the study. The WAP Forum also noted in London, where the survey was conducted, wireless operator BT Cellnet has more than 500,000 WAP subscribers generating $160 per year in revenue for WAP services and usage, almost triple the number they had five months ago.
“Alternatively, the authors could have spoken with any of the millions of subscribers using EZWeb in Japan, or from any of the other dozens of operators that have deployed WAP-based technology worldwide,” the WAP Forum said in a statement.
“It is too early to trash WAP,” said Larry Swasey, senior vice president of communications research at Allied Business Intelligence Inc. “There are too many things that still have to occur before we know if WAP really works.”
Swasey explained the main test for WAP will happen when enough applications are eventually developed to test the technology.
“Those reports of WAP’s demise are too short-sighted,” Swasey said. “WAP has decent penetration where it has been introduced, but there are not enough appealing applications yet to see its real potential.”
Those expectations were hyped by the wireless Internet industry, which was looking for a quick way to get Internet content onto wireless devices, and the WAP Forum, which was attempting to drum up interest in the technology.
“Everyone was so excited about WAP when it was first announced. There was too much expectation, too early,” Swasey added.
But with the hype came expectations that were expected to be fulfilled on a rapid time line. The market was looking for WAP to take off in the same fashion as the wireless industry did a few years earlier.
Many analysts predicted the demise of WAP would be accelerated by Japanese wireless operator NTT DoCoMo’s investment deal with AT&T Corp. that could see DoCoMo’s wildly popular i-mode wireless Internet service introduced to the U.S. market.
Unfortunately for i-mode, the compact Hypertext Markup Language used to write applications to the service is not compliant with extensible markup language (XML) currently used for wireless Internet content in the United States. WAP was at the same disadvantage because its content language, Wireless Markup Language, is also not fully compatible with XML.
The WAP Forum realized this potential road block, and recently announced it will incorporate xHTML as the core markup language for WAP 2.0, the next generation of WAP.
British Airways recently added to WAP’s acceptance when it introduced a service allowing customers with WAP-enabled phones to check in without having to stand in line. Other airlines introduced similar services last year.
The WAP Forum noted in a release that a wireless entertainment company that deployed WAP has received more than 15 million hits on its site and has had more than 350,000 game-plays on its site in Italy alone.
“The WAP Forum has provided a stage with which to begin development of wireless Internet technology,” Swasey explained. “People should not be so critical. The WAP Forum has done a lot for the wireless industry.”
While the wireless industry may continue to look at WAP as a failure until it proves its usefulness, its supporters say with time, and appropriate applications, WAP can fulfill the needs of the wireless Internet.
“If anyone is looking for WAP to be a success or failure, it is to soon to judge yet,” said Swasey. “It is still in its infancy, and needs time to mature.”
