Will Wap's call go unanswered?

Consumers, businesses, the dog next door - it is unlikely that anyone has managed to escape the hype surrounding wireless application protocol (Wap) technology.

Promises of a panacea for mobile web surfers are showered on phone users daily, with advertising emblazoned across every other shop window, and news stories informing them of the latest company to offer new and exciting Wap services.

The dream of a world in which everyone can access the internet whenever and wherever they want from a mobile device is certainly an attractive one. But as the offerings and pledges proliferate, so too do fears that the dream is becoming an unrealistic nightmare.

To research company Ovum, such doubts are only to be expected. It says the hype surrounding Wap technology is being fed by infrastructure and technical suppliers, the investment community and a blinded press.

As a result, mobile users have formed expectations that are out of touch with reality, which means that mobile Wap operators should expect a backlash, warns Ovum.

Currently, Wap services are mostly text-based, with phones having small screens and keyboards. Connection and browsing speeds are slow and call charges high. Yet many consumers have been led to expect a more sophisticated service complete with graphics and colour content. In essence, they expect to replicate on their mobile phones the experience of surfing the internet from a PC, says Ovum.

Nigel Deighton, an analyst at researcher Gartner, claims that many consumers are deluded into thinking that Wap will enable them to access all elements of the internet using their phones. "Consumers need to be aware that Wap is not a 'surf-the-web passport'. There is a lot of hype out there and the reality of what we have is much different," he says.

Despite this, researchers such as JD Power and Associates predict that there will be some 90 million Wap-enabled phones in Europe by 2004, and that 35 per cent of mobile consumers in the UK will want access to the internet using their mobile phone.

The Wap bandwagon
The interest in surfing the web using a mobile phone is undeniable and operators have not been slow in encouraging customers to join the Wap brigade.

BT Cellnet, for example, this month announced plans to give away 150,000 Wap phones to new and existing customers of online bank, Egg, to enable them to access their banking services.

The deal follows BT Cellnet's earlier announcement that it would give Wap phones to the first 150,000 customers signing up to Halifax's 'Intelligent Finance Internet bank'. The mobile operator is also targeting shoppers by stocking Wap phones in all major UK supermarkets.

BT chief executive Sir Peter Bonfield said the aim of the Wap giveaway is to sign up more than 500,000 Wap phone customers by the middle of this year. He claimed that a significant proportion of all BT's phone sales would be generated from Wap technology by the middle of next year.

Rival UK operator Orange, which currently offers only one Wap phone, said it has never had a product that has generated so much consumer demand - although it appears that the company would need to introduce more handsets if it is to keep up with the competition.

Ovum, however, warns that the future success of Wap technology will depend on whether operators can rapidly expand their installed base of Wap terminals. Current delays in the delivery of terminals and services are narrowing the window of opportunity for Wap, the analyst argues.

"Operators and content providers can't afford to wait for better technology," says Ovum analyst Michele Mackenzie. "They can act now by moving beyond the hype and playing to the strengths of Wap. They must encourage adoption by delivering really compelling and innovative applications."

The danger facing Wap
There can be no denying that many companies have been quick to launch Wap services and it's rare to find a firm these days that has not at least begun to introduce Wap technology into its business or launched a new Wap-enabled service. But Ovum warns that many companies risk copying existing content that can be accessed easily and more cheaply elsewhere.

Wap technology alone will not be enough to seduce users, and other technologies such as message management, push services, security and short message services, are also needed, says Ovum.

Among those companies hoping to capitalise on the interest in Wap include Lotus. The company recently introduced a service called Domino Everyplace which enables Notes users to participate in business processes and access information managed by Domino servers from their Wap phones. The service also lets users send and receive email, and manage their calendars.

Stuart McRae, Lotus' senior product manager, says: "Wap technology can allow companies to operate more effectively and faster by providing easy and secure access to relevant internet or intranet information and other services."

UK wireless developer Peramon provides a multi-lingual email management system for Wap mobile phone users. Lexicoslite enables users to access any existing email system from their phones and supports nine languages, including French and Spanish.

Nad Nadesan, Peramon's marketing director, doesn't believe that Wap has been over-hyped. "Customers who have a PC and a mobile phone are aware of the size limitation and non-colour, and are not deluded into thinking otherwise," he says.

Rival technologies
While Gartner predicts that 95 per cent of new mobile phones will be Wap-enabled by 2004, it does not believe that Wap will be the only approach for delivering information to mobile devices.

Deighton says that although Wap is important, it is "not the only player in town". He predicts that other products, such as the Mobile Station Application Execution Environment, which incorporates a Java virtual machine into a mobile phone, will be the logical follow-on to Wap technology.

Ovum also expects the current focus on Wap as a technology to be eroded by the emergence of new mark-up languages under the XML standards umbrella. This, it predicts, will mean that Wap will no longer exist as independent technology by 2003 to 2005.

"Wap was never meant to be the be-all and end-all of mobile internet," says Mackenzie. "As and when mobile network improvements allow, more sophisticated technologies will take centre stage."

So, while the dream of accessing the internet from a mobile phone is likely to become a reality into the long term, it would appear that the technology to achieve this is still in its infancy.