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Discarded technologies are commonplace in a fast-changing environment. Is WAP set to be the next to bite the dust?

Earlier this year, investors' imaginations were captured by the 'Martini' promise of internet access 'any time, any place, anywhere'. Promising to marry the two technological revolutions of our time - the internet and the mobile phone - the appeal of such a service, to both consumers and businesses, looked assured. In recent months, any internet company worthy of its dotcom suffix has unveiled a strategy for a WAP service. Traditional bricks and mortar businesses, many of whom were criticised for not taking the 'tethered web' seriously and allowing start-ups to steal a march, have also taken the WAP bull by the horns. However, such enthusiasm, along with the share prices of telcos, content providers and hardware manufacturers, now seems to be on the wane.

The Wireless Application Protocol, which works over today's GSM network, provides clear open standards for both handsets and content to allow mobile phone users to access the internet. It has been devised and promoted by the WAP Forum, which boasts 200 members including Microsoft, Lucent, and Baltimore Technologies. Europe's telcos and handset manufacturers in particular have enthusiastically adopted the platform, extended the heavy investment required and set their marketing machine in motion. However, users have been far more sceptical about buying into a technology which attracts widespread criticism and which could become obsolete within a matter of months.

Launched earlier this year, the introduction of WAP into the UK mobile market was hampered by an ignominious delay in providing handsets. Although this problem has since been rectified, the handset remains an awkward platform from which to access the web, content, written in wireless markup language, is sparse, security remains an issue and access is slow.

Unwieldy hardware

The hardware, your WAP-enabled mobile phone, is wholly inadequate for surfing the web, both in its display and in its 'user interface'. Even typing or receiving e-mails can be laborious and time-consuming, on a screen the size of a bus ticket. Many industry watchers predict that PDAs, personal digital assistants, will supersede today's devices. Essentially hybrids of handheld computers and mobile phones, manufacturers have already developed an array of futuristic prototypes.

Much of the content being planned is built around reformatted data from the web, and does not take account of the fundamental differences in user 'wants' from the mobile internet. What content there is on the wireless web is limited to text, and there's not that much of it around. This is in stark contrast to the wealth of on-line information, presented in increasingly sophisticated ways, which can be accessed from a PC. The comparison is deeply flawed according to Henry O'Sullivan, head of mobile technology at Ofex-listed Earthport.com, which provides a WAP payment solution. 'WAP was mis-sold by a lot of companies, so consumers were expecting the internet on their mobile phone', he adds. 'Expecting what you have on your desktop PC on your mobile phone is unrealistic', admits O'Sullivan, 'as WAP is application, not content, based'.

Killer WAPplication

As Adrian Nemcek, Vice President of Motorola, recently proclaimed, in the world of mobile internet, 'the application is expected to be king'. Which application will be the 'killer app' is still uncertain. There is a convincing argument for business-to-workforce uses, such as fleet management and logistics. Some observers point to financial services as a key beneficiary of the WAP world, others are backing the computer games providers. The consensus is that content that takes advantage of the mobility of the user, alongside ones that are location-based and highly personalised, should be the most popular. Voice recognition, which is already being tested in the US by Lycos as a means to retrieve information from the internet, could also kick-start the use of the wireless web. As a result, voice may well remain the killer application for mobile telephony.

But what about actually making money on the mobile web? Initially, many data services, as modelled on the 'tethered web', are expected to be free of charge. Nevertheless, Datamonitor makes the rather optimistic forecast that consumer spending (on goods only) from m-commerce will be worth $16.6 billion by 2005. This seems at odds with the slow uptake of WAP-enabled handsets by consumers. BT Cellnet, the UK's market leader in the mobile internet, had 420,000 WAP customers at the end of September and claims that one fifth of all calls made on these phones are to the internet or e-mail services. The huge number of WAP handsets given away on a daily basis in competitions and as part of a financial services deal suggest that sales have not met expectations. Network operators are nervously waiting for the critical Christmas sales figures.

Many of the more fantastic predictions were predicated on the assumption that the number of mobile devices would hit 1 billion by 2003, according to Insinger Townsley, greatly exceeding the number of PCs and therefore drawing new users into the net.

Speed freaks

Significantly, WAP is frustratingly slow and cumbersome. At a mere 9.6 kilobits per second, it is much slower than a typical home modem, which delivers 56.6 kilobits per second.

More advanced, though still embryonic, technologies look set to address these issues with the higher bandwidth that they offer. Hot on the heels of WAP, and threatening its very future, is GPRS (General Packer Radio Service). Between three and ten times faster than its forebearer (depending on the network's capacity), this intermediate 2.5G technology offers an 'always on' service. BTCellnet already offers such a service for corporate customers and expects to introduce a consumer product this winter. Despite assurances from BT that the two services will be run in conjunction with each other, WAP phones, which do not work on GPRS, look set for an early grave.

Third generation UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) is faster still. With speeds of between 384 kilobits and 2 megabits per second, these third generation devices allow users access to superior services such as games, MP3 and video playback. Mobile phone operators in Western Europe, who have already forked out nearly Euro100 billion for 3G licences, expect to deliver this service in 2002. Believe it or not, mobile phone manufacturers are already developing 4G which, when ready in about ten years time, will be six times faster that its predecessor.

More imminently, there is pressure from i-mode, the hugely successful service operated by Japan's leading mobile phone operator, NTT DoCoMo. With 12 million subscribers and thousands of unofficial websites, i-mode is now the world's second largest ISP. DoCoMo's plan to roll out this service across Europe was given a significant boost recently when it acquired a 15 per cent stake in Holland's KPN Mobile.

WAPlash

The great fear is that telcos have swelled expectations of the user, who will consequently find the service frustrating and switch off. Ultimately, the success of WAP depends on the usefulness and cleverness of services and applications as judged by the consumer.

This remains an unpredictable element in the WAP equation. Just look at the unexpected popularity of the short messaging system on mobile phones.

More importantly, if WAP continues to be a flop, it may also compromise the success of 3G and 4G, both of which could have a more than adequate stab at converting internet, phone and PC users into mobile internet aficionados.

However, our impatience with this fledgling technology should be tempered by the understanding that this is just one step in the much longer march towards creating a handset capable of all those Star Trek features that we have long coveted. As Nick Tamblyn, financial director of Aim-listed e-commerce investor web-angel argues, 'although this mispublicity [about WAP] will undermine the take-up and pace of change of the mobile internet, it will not undermine change itself, which is inevitable'.