Nice explanation of WAP:
e-town.com
WAP UPSIDE THE WEB
Microbrowsing a micro-Web
by Stewart Wolpin
[This is the second part in a four-part series on smartphones. --Ed.]
May 5, 1999 -- In the first part of this story, I discussed the marriage of cell phones and PDAs in a single WAP-compliant (wireless application protocol) smartphone with a built-in microbrowser. An important issue is that this microbrowser is used with tiny, monochrome screens to display Web information. But we'd first better define our terms. This "Web" that microbrowser-equipped phones deliver is not really the Web, and you're not really browsing.
Nokia and Ericsson have been at the forefront of the development of WAP, an open standard for wireless mobile applications. For WAP's application in mobile devices, such as cell phones, Nokia and Ericsson are using the trademarked WWW:MMM -- World Wide Web: Mobile Media Mode.
How standard is the WAP standard? Other WAP Forum members include Alcatel, AT&T Wireless, BellAtlantic, BellSouth, HP, IBM, ICO (one of the upcoming satellite phone providers), Intel, LG, Matsushita (Panasonic's parent company), Mitsubishi, Motorola, NEC, Nortel, Philips, Samsung, Siemens, Sony, Sprint, Toshiba and Uniden. I think that just about covers everyone, including Qualcomm and IGS (via LG).
One of WAP's jobs is to create a standard language with which Web pages can be created and then viewed by microbrowsers, such as the popular one from Unwired Planet (UP, but Phone.com as of April 20), the microbrowser of choice on nearly two dozen cell phones of varying smartness.
WAP works essentially the same way the Web does. Browsers such as Netscape and Explorer translate HTML-coded (et al) pages into something you can read on your PC screen. WAP uses the Web's worldwide network, but microbrowsers translate truncated WAP-encoded pages using WML (Wireless Markup Language) into a readable form for reading on your cell phone or PDA screen. The WAP-compliant microbrowser is resident on your wireless device in the same way that Netscape or Explorer is resident on your hard drive and translates all this WAP-encoded data.
In other words, when using a WAP-compliant microbrowser, you are not seeing a Web page such as the one you are now viewing. WAP pages have to be specially and separately created.
No surfing
As noted, "microbrowser" really is a misnomer. A microbrowser does not let you "browse" -- you can't surf the Net and, say, call up etown.com on your WAP-compliant cell phone or PDA screen.
Rather, a microbrowser serves up only those special WAP-encoded pages of data created by a particular content provider usually in concert with or for some hardware supplier. Presumably, the WAP-compliant market will one day be large enough that all websites will have WAP equivalents. Or, conversely, that smartphones get smart (that is, fast enough) to display the real Web. But I digress.
What types of pages and data are we talking about? News, stocks, travel information, such as directions and restaurant listings -- the kind of stuff you'd expect a traveling smartphone user would want to access.
For instance, CNN has created the WAP-compliant CNN Mobile to deliver a full range of national, regional and local information to your WAP-compliant mobile device. You can get a glimmer of an idea of how CNN Mobile works -- and, by extension, any WAP Web page -- on a less-than-fully-endowed Nokia mockup on CNN's Shockwave-powered demo.
And last month IBM and Nokia announced that they were working on a real time WAP-delivered interactive service using SABRE that will allow you to initiate flight changes and receive flight updates from airlines 24/7/365. If working wonks want WAP, expect lots more WAP data to be created.
But WAP is still pretty much a work in progress. The development kits from Nokia have only been available since early this year. So developers such as Phone.com/Unwired Planet (UP), service providers and the phone makers themselves have been scrambling to get up to WAP speed.
The UP microbrowser on the NeoPoint 1000 prototype I'm grubbily gripping, for instance, is not completely WAP-compliant. Migrating to a fully WAP-compliant browser is a matter of downloading the new microbrowser software, then transferring it to the phone via the phone's PC docking station. Users of cell phones without PC connectivity are SOL if they desire to upgrade to the latest WAP-compliant microbrowser.
Who's going to serve up this WAP data? CDMA providers at 14.4k for one. Nokia's first 7110 push will be on GSM's European network. I suspect that WAP-complaint service will be geographically spotty at first. Like all things WAP, success depends on consumers' acceptance and willingness to pay more for both expensive smartphones and service.
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