It's a bitter disappointment if Nokia can't do better than 30% of the WAP handsets, Sisuman. That's the current share in plain vanilla phones. Eric has been proudly talking about Motorola's WAP models and Mika has been raving about Ericsson's WAP phones. However, these phones are not selling Europe-wide yet. Last week in France, Motorola's Timeport phone was still selling as a non-WAP version. Ericsson is selling the R-320 in Sweden, but there doesn't seem to be volume shipments to major European markets yet.
In a similar vein, Siemens has been pushing back its WAP phone for months now. OK - Nokia's 7110 faced its own delays, but at least it's shipping in hundreds of thousands in February. I'm expecting Nokia to introduce a variety of WAP phones in different product categories by spring, so that there would be a full range of handsets.
On the other hand, the number of low-end pre-paid models is also increasing rapidly in Southern Europe and Asia. Here the margins are lower, so it's hard to say how well the WAP margins can offset this situation. I'm somewhat skeptical about the US WAP sales potential. Operators haven't been prioritizing WAP there and if the infrastructure and content invstment isn't there, the concept won't catch on.
Tero
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