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26 October 2000
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a great, secure architecture but in terms of market acceptance it's taking strain; i-mode is the most successful mobile service of all, but it is not secure and limited to Japan.
Somewhere between these two realities is the nub of a potentially market-changing possibility: could WAP and i-mode from Japan's DoCoMo be merged into dual-mode browsers that would support the best of both mobile Internet interfaces?
Reasons? Better content, and a migration to the technically superior compact HTML (cHTML)-based i-mode.
cHTML uses a packet overlay and is optimised for an always-online world. It is part of the HTML protocol used for the Web, so no new skills are needed. I-mode also supports micro-billing, colour screens and animated graphics, and will soon support Java and push services.
DoCoMo and the WAP Forum are looking to bring the technologies together to allow global access to all content.
I-mode has also marketed itself brilliantly, pivotal to its success. WAP has pretty much missed its message to market, so a dual-mode browser would be a cool compromise, yielding the best of both worlds.
WAP continues to draw attention, not all of it positive. At the recent Wireless World 2000 show in New York, two wireless heavyweights slugged it out around the topic of WAP. David Hayden, president and CEO of wireless content firm MobileID, said WAP is a de facto standard, supported by 130 carriers and 30 000 developers. But Raj Gupta, president of mobile portal Yada Yada.com, won't hear of it, insisting HTML is a perfectly good Internet standard and we don't need WAP. My input: the wireless Web is on its way, whatever critics and industry observers might say.
After all, subscribers in the UK are voting with their pounds: 420 000 of them bought WAP phones this summer, up 40% over the quarter.
And even venerable SAS Institute is teaming with Nokia to add WAP capabilities to its business intelligence software. Nokia has been cutting deals with many vendors to wirelessly enable their software, including SAP AG, Siebel Systems and Tibco Software.
And how's this for a statistic? The GSM Association reports that in August nine billion wireless text SMS messages were sent globally from 354 million GSM mobile phones worldwide. Most of the SMS traffic originated in Europe and Asia, where GSM networks are the standard.
Informix, like other database vendors, is looking to reinvent itself with a mobile focus. It has struck a deal with Symbian in terms of which the two will build enterprise applications for smartphones with Informix's small footprint, Java Cloudscape database. Sybase has a similar deal in place centred on its UltraLite database with Ericsson. Cloudscape gets Symbian's nod as requiring less administration than other databases, and because it can update application code running on mobile devices automatically, whenever mobile devices are linked to a server.
If there's one technology that's been in eternal "promising" mode it's speech recognition. Too many errors and illogical translations have meant it's always in R&D. But could mobile be the catalyst to propel speech recognition into the mainstream? New York-based Allied Business Intelligence thinks so: it predicts there will be nearly one million people using voice-enabled wireless portal services by next year, and over 56 million by 2005. It expects there to be 17 million users of voice-enabled portals on the Web. That's impressive, given the difficulty of entering text on small handheld devices, but there's going to have to be some serious investment if speech recognition is to work. Just think of the word right it could also be spelt Wright, write or rite.
Just how do they arrive at these numbers? The International Data Corporation believes the market for wireless application service providers will be worth $732 million by 2004. Major growth areas: Enterprise WASPs, which provide wireless access to customer relationship management and sales force applications for corporate users; collaborative providers that offer access to groupware; and companies that rent users personal access to wireless services.
Further news from Japan is that Sanyo has developed a mobile phone handset with integrated Bluetooth and digital camera that can transfer pictures directly to a printer. You try and work out when you would need such a device.
Sources: Computergram and Silicon.com.
Fickle fame
WAP continues to draw attention, not all of it positive.
Reasons? Better content, and a migration to the technically superior compact HTML (cHTML)-based i-mode.
cHTML uses a packet overlay and is optimised for an always-online world. It is part of the HTML protocol used for the Web, so no new skills are needed. I-mode also supports micro-billing, colour screens and animated graphics, and will soon support Java and push services.
DoCoMo and the WAP Forum are looking to bring the technologies together to allow global access to all content.
I-mode has also marketed itself brilliantly, pivotal to its success. WAP has pretty much missed its message to market, so a dual-mode browser would be a cool compromise, yielding the best of both worlds.
WAP continues to draw attention, not all of it positive. At the recent Wireless World 2000 show in New York, two wireless heavyweights slugged it out around the topic of WAP. David Hayden, president and CEO of wireless content firm MobileID, said WAP is a de facto standard, supported by 130 carriers and 30 000 developers. But Raj Gupta, president of mobile portal Yada Yada.com, won't hear of it, insisting HTML is a perfectly good Internet standard and we don't need WAP. My input: the wireless Web is on its way, whatever critics and industry observers might say.
After all, subscribers in the UK are voting with their pounds: 420 000 of them bought WAP phones this summer, up 40% over the quarter.
And even venerable SAS Institute is teaming with Nokia to add WAP capabilities to its business intelligence software. Nokia has been cutting deals with many vendors to wirelessly enable their software, including SAP AG, Siebel Systems and Tibco Software.
And how's this for a statistic? The GSM Association reports that in August nine billion wireless text SMS messages were sent globally from 354 million GSM mobile phones worldwide. Most of the SMS traffic originated in Europe and Asia, where GSM networks are the standard.
Informix, like other database vendors, is looking to reinvent itself with a mobile focus. It has struck a deal with Symbian in terms of which the two will build enterprise applications for smartphones with Informix's small footprint, Java Cloudscape database. Sybase has a similar deal in place centred on its UltraLite database with Ericsson. Cloudscape gets Symbian's nod as requiring less administration than other databases, and because it can update application code running on mobile devices automatically, whenever mobile devices are linked to a server.
If there's one technology that's been in eternal "promising" mode it's speech recognition. Too many errors and illogical translations have meant it's always in R&D. But could mobile be the catalyst to propel speech recognition into the mainstream? New York-based Allied Business Intelligence thinks so: it predicts there will be nearly one million people using voice-enabled wireless portal services by next year, and over 56 million by 2005. It expects there to be 17 million users of voice-enabled portals on the Web. That's impressive, given the difficulty of entering text on small handheld devices, but there's going to have to be some serious investment if speech recognition is to work. Just think of the word right it could also be spelt Wright, write or rite.
Just how do they arrive at these numbers? The International Data Corporation believes the market for wireless application service providers will be worth $732 million by 2004. Major growth areas: Enterprise WASPs, which provide wireless access to customer relationship management and sales force applications for corporate users; collaborative providers that offer access to groupware; and companies that rent users personal access to wireless services.
Further news from Japan is that Sanyo has developed a mobile phone handset with integrated Bluetooth and digital camera that can transfer pictures directly to a printer. You try and work out when you would need such a device.
Sources: Computergram and Silicon.com.
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