re: Getting to WAP 2.0
Long but good.
>> Ugly Duckling
Trefor Moss
Mobile Communications International
Issue 85, 01 October 2001
As its early steps continue to prove unsure, speculation grows as to whether WAP is not so much finding its feet as nearing collapse. But while WAP services have struggled to fire the user's imagination, there are expectations that the newly released version of the protocol will provide developers with the means to deliver an experience that the consumer will keenly endorse.
Never promise what you can't deliver. In a now text-book case of how not to market a new technology, BT Cellnet used a silver surfer lookalike to advertise the thrills and spills of its new WAP service which offered, by implication, internet surfing on a mobile phone. WAP was really just an infant technology with modest capabilities but, disastrously, the consumer was led to expect something wholly more exciting. Pretty soon, having slipped rather pitifully off his board, the poor silver surfer was floundering way out of his depth; his moves had impressed nobody.
Not that the blame for the over-hype rests solely with BT Cellnet - many were guilty of trying to make WAP run before it could walk. In early 2000 a confident Ericsson pronounced that "the deployment of WAP would be welcomed and give rise to rapid, large-scale market penetration." The year before, an optimistic Nokia had projected that, "WAP services will be easy for mobile phone users to adopt." The benefit of hindsight makes it easy to criticise predictions of this sort but it is now clear that the introduction of WAP, coming as it did in the heady days of the GSM boom, was fundamentally hamstrung by naive complacency.
So in what state does WAP find itself? Is it really the dismal failure that people make out? "I take exception to people saying that WAP has not taken off," says Scott Goldman, speaking to MCI on his last day as CEO of the WAP Forum at the end of August. Goldman points out that having already claimed 18 million users worldwide WAP has enjoyed faster growth than many other subsequently popular technologies, like mobile phones, managed to achieve.
In terms of user numbers WAP has, of course, suffered from comparisons with i-mode, which has already attracted a user base of 27 million people in just the one country. This comparison, though, is a false one. "Likening i-mode to WAP is like comparing a car to petrol," suggests the sales and marketing director of AU-System UK, Nick Williams. It isn't that the technology behind i-mode is superior. The difference is that, unlike WAP, i-mode is an entire service package, a brand over which one operator, NTT DoCoMo, exercises end-to-end control. WAP, on the other hand, is a set of open specifications available to operators and content developers to do with as they will, and all too often their deployment of WAP has been misdirected and unimaginative. "What we've learned from Japan and i-mode is that a monopoly is a wonderful thing," comments Nikesh Arora, CEO of T-Mobile's portal service, T-Motion. The provision of open specifications is obviously intended to facilitate development, but Arora suspects that in WAP's case too much openness has hampered early progress.
As a source of added complexity, the term WAP has come to apply to the data services for which WAP is really only a foundation. Strictly speaking, WAP is just a protocol, a mechanism for transferring data from one place to another. In this respect it would be absurd to label it as being anything other than functioning or non-functioning. And WAP certainly does function.
"I personally don't think it's appropriate to brand something with a technology," says Scott Goldman. "You don't brand PCs as being IP-capable, so why brand mobile phones as being WAP-capable?"
In fact, only Europe has fallen into this trap. The US market has steered clear of adopting WAP as a generic term, and Japan has coined catchy names - i-mode, J-Sky, EZWeb - with marked success. Europe, though, risks burying WAP in a terminological minefield. In addition, people are becoming cagey about using what is surely the natural term, 'mobile internet', for fear of repeating past marketing mistakes.
WAP's problem is clearly one of image above all else - much of the mud that has been slung has stuck effectively. 'The WAP trap' has come to symbolise a graveyard for failed wireless applications. And people still commonly mutter that "WAP is crap." Detaching the over-technical WAP name with its bad connotations from the end product was perhaps a tacit objective of the GSM Association's recent M-Services initiative, although opinion varies as to whether M-Services could ultimately emerge as an umbrella term for wireless data applications. In any case, the success of text messaging has demonstrated that devising a service that people like is infinitely more important than coining a name that is pleasing to the ear.
The optimistic analyst points out that WAP is merely at the low point of a classic s-curve: early enthusiasm cools but after a period of stagnation interest starts to pick up again. But what if WAP has not so much descended the s-curve as irrevocably flatlined?
Things are surely going to get better for WAP, though. As an underlying technology WAP is perfectly sound, and WAP 2.0, or WAP NG (Next Generation), released in August, promises a new range of features and opportunities. The journalistic trend to be tough on WAP has led to the new release receiving a mixed reception but, realistically, the significance of version two is considerable.
"WAP 2.0's release is a welcome move," says Helene Birknert of Ericsson's strategic marketing division. "It's a step in the right direction." WAP 2.0 certainly papers over many of version one's cracks. It supports colour, considered by many to be an essential factor in the enlivening of WAP services, and accommodates the downloading of MP3s and animation. WAP 1's security loophole, which opens invitingly when data is decrypted before arriving at the WAP gateway, will be sealed by the end-to-end encryption boasted by version two. Multimedia messaging and WAP Push - the facility of sending data without the specific instigation of the user - are features that the WAP 1.2 release technically supported, but will only set to receive large-scale implementation via WAP 2.0.
Perhaps most significant is that WAP 2.0 moves away from WML, WAP's current mark-up language, and opts instead for xHTML, a formulation of HTML, the internet's mark-up language. Helene Birknert believes that the difficulty of writing applications in WML has contributed to the poor range and quality of services produced so far. "xHTML will make it quicker and easier to write applications and bring them to market," she suggests.
Boris Lacroix, director of product marketing in Europe for Openwave (which in its previous manifestation as Unwired Planet co-wrote the WAP specification), does not regard the decision to change language as having been forced by any real need to get way from WML. "There is no problem with WML," he argues. "It's about a vision of convergence." Convergence with the internet is, of course, the ultimate goal that Lacroix and many others envisage, and the switch to xHTML clearly brings content for wireless devices closer into line with that of the fixed-line internet.
The adoption of xHTML also represents a shift towards i-mode, which uses another HTML variant, cHTML. So is this a case of WAP striving to emulate i-mode's success by brazenly copying it? Plausible though it might seem, it isn't that straightforward. As the convergence continues apace, i-mode will in fact be meeting WAP halfway. DoCoMo has never been an opponent of the WAP specification. It has a seat on the board of the WAP Forum.
"DoCoMo has played a pivotal role in the driving and development of WAP 2.0," Scott Goldman reveals. Nor has DoCoMo helped to develop the new specification out of the goodness of its heart - new releases of its flagship i-mode and the new FOMA 3G service are themselves adopting the WAP 2.0 protocol. Apart from signifying an important juncture in the progression towards one global mobile internet standard, the support of DoCoMo represents a vote of confidence in the entire WAP concept.
DoCoMo has not proved the only surprise proponent of the WAP protocol. Microsoft shunned WAP in its early days, put off by what Dilip Mistry, Microsoft's marketing manager for mobile phones, describes as the "misdirection" of early WAP development. "People were saying that nothing from the computing world made sense and that we had to start from scratch with WAP," he recalls.
Having overcome its misgivings, though, Microsoft has turned into what Scott Goldman describes as "an integral partner" in the WAP Forum. Microsoft's growing interest in the mobile space will inevitably be construed by the suspicious as an insidious intrusion but, as Mistry is quick to point out, "this is nobody's turf." Some parties are unfazed by what they regard as Microsoft's incoherent wireless strategy. Mistry, though, believes that Microsoft's wealth of internet experience will stand it in good stead for its assault on the WAP market. An obvious problem is that Microsoft has only partnered with second-tier handset manufacturers like Samsung and Sendo, and so its WAP microbrowser may have trouble working its way into phones made by the larger manufacturers which, of course, have their own browser solutions. But Mistry foresees something of a sea change in the approach to mobile internet software and browsers which, in his opinion, users will be able to download and swap as easily as they swap fascias today. Moreover, he expects operators to demand that vendors like Nokia and Ericsson build Microsoft's WAP-related products into their handsets because of the added value that the Microsoft brand delivers.
Inevitably, there is a downside to the new 2.0 specification. The WAP landscape is already complicated by the existence of differing versions of release one. Different handsets are, of course, compliant with different versions of WAP, and the release of WAP 2.0 will only add to the problem.
In order for people to reap the benefits that the new protocol can provide, they will need to buy a WAP 2.0-compliant handset. But will WAP 2.0 compliance inspire anyone to go out and invest in a new phone? Obviously not, which begs the question of how long it will take before handsets supporting version two proliferate in any number. There is optimism that version two colour handsets will appear in time for this year's pre-Christmas shopathon, but there are no clear indications whether it is well-founded.
On a grim note, a recent report on WAP by US-based analysts the Shosteck Group gives WAP 2.0 worryingly little chance of making any sort of mark, suggesting that by the time supporting technologies enter the marketplace WAP 2.0 will be out of date and irrelevant.
One encouraging ray of light has come in the form of GPRS's arrival. GPRS networks should ultimately prove a godsend to the mobile internet, with always-on connection greatly widening the scope for application content and replacing the sluggishness of circuit switching. For the time being, as GPRS remains an essentially niche technology, applications will not, of course, be any more compelling - GPRS will just enable boring content to bore users more quickly.
GPRS will certainly remove one barrier in WAP's path, but roll-out is proving annoyingly protracted. Nikesh Arora of T-Motion acknowledges that this is frustrating. Even One2One, T-Motion's affiliated operator in the UK, has postponed its GPRS launch but Arora deflects the blame away from his operator colleagues. So where does the main onus lie for ensuring the realisation of the anticipated WAP-GPRS synergies? "The same vendors who sell the handsets also sell the infrastructure," Arora pointedly observes.
He appreciates that operators and developers must also take their share of responsibility in engineering an appealing WAP experience, but adds that currently "the ball is in the vendors' court."
However, it is not the manufacturers' fault that WAP applications with appealing or entertaining qualities have only appeared sporadically. In particular, interoperability problems and technical issues have dogged WAP usage. A recent study conducted by ArgoGroup revealed that not even one of the 1,000 tested WAP sites operated satisfactorily on all of the three devices used, a Nokia 7110, an Ericsson R320 and a Siemens C35.
"This was really quite depressing," admits James Pearce, Argogroup's VP of developer relations, but perhaps understandable - there are around 700 varying combinations of WAP browser, firmware and hardware. Pearce, though, appreciates that interoperability cannot be achieved by increasing handset conformity. Proprietary handset features and browser variations are inevitable as long as differentiation remains a prerequisite to saleability. The Argogroup report highlights the fact that interoperability must now become a foremost consideration in the development of any WAP application.
Ericsson's Helene Birknert also identifies what has been an almost lackadaisical approach to service creation. "Every application should take a couple of seconds to download and be no more than three clicks away," she observes.
"But developers haven't had this focus in the past." T-Motion's solution to the problem of sub-standard application development has been to implement charging for selected content. Nikesh Arora admits that it is a risky strategy to implement charging for content at this early stage. However, developers need to be offered some financial incentive to go that extra mile and produce diverting, original material.
If there is one realistic threat to the future of WAP, it is perhaps SMS and its emergent descendant MMS. As developers increasingly turn their attention towards exploring SMS's capabilities they are discovering that the scope for creating interesting applications is quite considerable.
If the development of SMS content outpaces that of WAP services then WAP could potentially become a dinosaur, unused and barely missed. This seems an unlikely eventuality, however. Apart from the fact that WAP development is itself becoming an increasingly attractive prospect, the fact that WAP 2.0 is designed to act as a bearer for multimedia messaging should mean that messaging will not cast WAP's future into doubt.
From an end user's point of view, it must be hoped that the term WAP is supplanted by a more suitable catchword. The real WAP, though, the protocol itself, will be with us for the foreseeable future, be it in a GPRS or a 3G environment. Even doubters who suggest that WAP will soon have had its day are more reticent when it comes to identifying a likely replacement. For the silver surfer, then, all is not lost. In the coming year it may well be reasonable for BT Cellnet to put him back on his board, and this time he stands a far better chance of staying on his feet. <<
- Eric - |
