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To: ms.smartest.person who wrote (71)	6/16/2000 3:01:00 AM
From: ms.smartest.person	Respond to of 307

Euro WAP 1. INTERVIEW-Wapit offering free WAP to beat Nokia, Ericsson 15-Jun-2000 16:04 CET europeaninvestor.com 2. CHARLES SCHWAB, ERICSSON TO DEVELOP WAP-BASED TRADING APPLICATIONS 15-Jun-2000 16:54 CET 3. INTERVIEW-Cellphone comics to launch in Finland, then Europe 15-Jun-2000 19:09 CET By Paul de Bendern HELSINKI, June 15 (Reuters) - Bored waiting for your train to arrive? If you're in Finland pick up your WAP mobile phone and tap into the latest "Flip and Nick" cartoon to pass the time. A group of innovators, two Finns and an American, are launching in Finland on Friday a pop culture newspaper-type cartoon series for WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) phones. "It's a WAP comic. The first time a comic has specifically been made for WAP phones," Douglas Smith, chief creative officer at six-month old entertainment start-up Moving Entertainment Oy Ltd who wrote the comic, told Reuters in an interview. This is the latest offering to Finland's mobile phone community -- where there are more cellphone users per capita than anywhere else -- and where some shy Finns seem to prefer to communicate with each other via text messages than by voice. Smith, who writes under the pseudonym of Max Hamilton, said Helsinki-based Moving Entertainment was currently talking to European mobile operators and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to license its first cartoon entertainment product. They were already in talks with a large British operator, but Smith declined to name the company. Moving Entertainment will charge for its services by flat rates or revenue sharing. Smith said "Flip and Mick" would first be launched commercially in Finnish on Friday in partnership with Helsinki-based media group Sanoma-WSOY (SWSBV.HEL) but then become available from operators and ISPs in Europe this summer. If you have a Nokia (NOK1V.HEL) 7110 WAP phone -- which has access to modified Internet content -- and are member of Club Nokia you can now access for free "Flip and Mick" from several countries in Europe, Smith said. FAMOUS CARTOONS SOON AVAILABLE While Smith expected "Flip and Mick" to run for some 10 years on the mobile entertainment circuit -- upgraded with better graphics and moving images when technology allowed -- he said it was only a showcase of what was to come. Japan's mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo offers some cartoon content to its subscribers in Japan. "We're talking to comics and companies to take famous print cartoons onto WAP phones, so in three months time you might see your favourite comic on your phone," he said, adding that research showed the potential for mobile entertainment was huge. He said the market expected some 700 million mobile phone users to be using wireless entertainment by 2005. Leading mobile phone makers, Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson , expect to see a a billion cellphone users by 2003. "Flip and Mick" -- two 10-year-old comic star kids trapped inside a mobile phone with a robotic toy dog who dreams of working for NASA as a Mars lander -- will arrive on people's mobile phones five times a week. Smith said 200 episodes, with six pictures and accompanying text in each series, were already made and targeted to people aged 15 to 40. Visiting characters such as Bill Gates, Pamela Anderson and Michael Jackson pop up in the cartoons. "It's a pop culture satire, poking fun at the culture of TV and celebrities," he said. "We've got an Ally McBeal lawyer defending Flip in court, while Michael Jackson appears as an alien in disguise, which we all know is true." He acknowledged the resolution on WAP phones was quite limited at the moment but still believed it would be a success and become better as mobile operators upgraded their networks to GPRS and third generation systems, allowing for animated comics. "This is the first product from us," Smith said, adding he was now working on another cartoon. The company planned to offer short fiction, commentaries and games as well to phone users. europeaninvestor.com