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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric L who wrote (3566)	10/9/2000 8:19:31 PM
From: Ruffian	Respond to of 197227

Bum WAP By:Dylan Tweney Issue: November 2000 Print Article \| Email This Article The technology that turns your cell phone into a Web browser is hot -- except with customers. The name WAP -- a.k.a. the Wireless Application Protocol -- evokes the visual effects of the 1960s Batman television show, which might be appropriate, given that WAP is supposed to be the superhero of the wireless Web. WAP is a set of standards that make it possible to display websites on the screens of tiny cell phones. A website built with WAP technology can be viewed on any WAP-enabled cell phone, regardless of the phone's manufacturer or the service carrier. That opens up a large universe of potential customers, and the number of WAP-accessible sites is growing, from 2,500 at the end of 1999 to more than 40,000 today, according to research by wireless search-engine provider Pinpoint.com and the WAP Forum, an industry consortium. The one problem is that WAP-enabled phones simply aren't turning out to be all that attractive to customers, and fairly or not, WAP itself is the focal point of the disappointment. In Europe, where WAP-enabled Web phones have been on the market for more than a year, actual use of the Web is very low -- no more than a few minutes per user per month. And in the United States, too, consumer reaction to the recent rollouts of comparable phones has been lukewarm. The WAP-enabled cell phone is just plain hard to use, given that websites, even after conversion to WAP, are designed to be viewed on a large desktop, not a minuscule cell-phone screen. "WAP is going to be useful if you have a very specific type of query," claims Brian McConnell, president of Trekmail, a provider of Web-phone e-mail services. "But the idea that you're going to surf on your phone is a tough sell because the interface is tough. You're going to want to hit the button, get the information you want, and get off as soon as possible." WAP may simply have been oversold. Late last year it was widely hailed as the flagship technology for using the Internet over wireless devices. But in hindsight, that vision set expectations way too high. For one thing, the bandwidth available to cell phones is very limited -- only about 19.2 kilobits per second at the fastest, comparable to an early '90s modem -- which means that information comes and goes with excruciating slowness. Then there's the practical reality that most websites aren't accessible from your cell phone. WAP sites are a drop in the bucket compared with the millions of sites viewable on a PC. And those that do exist are not yet optimized for heavy traffic, which means even longer waits for information. But the biggest limitation is simply those absurdly small cell-phone screens. What can anyone really see on a screen half the size of a credit card? Certainly not the rich view of the Web that comes across a 15-inch desktop monitor. That may be the heart of the problem. To surf the Web the way we do on desktops is a nonstarter on cell phones, so what the wireless Web really needs is a new approach to interface design suitable for the smaller screens -- not simply the conversion of webpages as we know them to a standard compatible with cell phones. In Japan, where NTT DoCoMo has launched I-mode, a wildly successful Web-phone service, some of the most popular services, like delivering a small Hello Kitty cartoon to your mobile phone, are uniquely tailored to that teensy screen. But then Japan has always had a talent for miniaturization