Push coming to WAP-enabled mobile phones
By Ephraim Schwartz
InfoWorld Electric
infoworld.com
Posted at 1:38 PM PT, Nov 1, 1999
Push technology, a concept that has been with us since Alexander Graham Bell invented the ringing telephone, will get a significant upgrade for mobile phones early next year.
The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Forum will introduce in the first quarter the next version of WAP, which will add a push specification to the protocol according to Chuck Parrish, vice chairman of the WAP Forum. Currently version 1.1 is shipping.
Push technology on mobile phones is expected to be used for real-time alerts, accessing purchasing price information, airline schedule and meeting changes, among other things, according to Phil Hester, chief technology officer at IBM's Personal Systems Group, in Raleigh, N.C., and a member of the WAP Forum.
Instant messaging will also be on mobile phones within the year, said Parrish. As WAP-enabled phones scale beyond voice access, corporate IT organizations and industry analysts believe mobile phones will in some cases replace handheld devices.
"Eventually we would love to see cell phone, handheld, and messaging in one device," said John Weaver, vice president of information technology at Electra Entertainment Group, in New York.
According to David Hayden, senior industry analyst at Mobile Insights, in Mountain View, Calif., by 2003 there will be 500 million mobile phones, half of which will have access to the Internet.
"WAP-enabled mobile phones will be ten times the volume of handhelds," said Hayden.
Parrish, who is also an executive vice president at Phone.com, in Redwood City, Calif., said his company is licensing its WAP-compliant browser to 26 mobile phone manufacturers.
"What is clear, and generally accepted is that the number of people accessing the Internet from phones will be larger than those accessing from PCs," Parrish said.
Reaching those numbers on mobile phones will get even easier due to a recent Microsoft announcement that the next version of its microbrowser architecture for mobile phones will be WAP-compliant.
"Microsoft will make sure our implementation [of a microbrowser] works with WAP gateways," said Kevin Dallas, group product manager for the Wireless Telephony business unit at Microsoft.
According to Dallas the big challenge for the industry is interoperabilty. Although Microsoft's browser will be compatible with WAP gateways, Dallas said that he did not rule out extending the microbrowser's capabilities beyond the standard WAP features.
The WAP Forum can be reached at www.wapforum.org.
InfoWorld Editor at Large Ephraim Schwartz is based in San Francisco. |
