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WAP vs. iMode - The Big Cell Fight
har124 writes: "With DoCoMo's decision to take its i-Mode phones, which are hugely popular in Japan, to the U.S. and Europe, the big fight between i-Mode and WAP seems to have begun. Who'll emerge from this bloody brawl? Check out the discussion."
This has nothing to do with WAP, but with PDC vs. GSM. When we have GPRS for GSM, we get higher data speeds for any data application, including WAP. If you would try to do I-Mode over GSM, you would get a similar speed, or perhaps even worse, since in WAP the data is somewhat compressed (I don't know whether I-Mode compresses over the air-link).
3. When WAP decided to come out, it thought, hell, we don't need no stinking http protocol, we will invent our own called WAP. yeah, great idea guys, did you forget to mention that you are re-inventing the wheel here or were we supposed to see something great and new. Basically they made a system where the phone contacts the provider which has a server, the server goes out to the site that they want and looks for WML files, the server crunches them and then sends them back to the phone. (at least, that is the way that it is supposed to work, I haven't had anyone prove that it works yet) This is really great, so this is basically a proxy server going to a web server and delivering a page that they can see on thier phone. Why not just use the TCP/IP and go hit a web page designed for a phone. If a server is set up correctly and the programmer has a clue, they will do some client checking and send the phones to a greatly stripped down page were all they see is the text, nothing fancy.
First you complain about the speed, then you want plain HTTP over TCP/IP! WAP was not just for the fun of getting a new standard, but especially designed so that it would at least be a little faster than sending uncompressed HTML over a data link (air link).
Since WAP also includes terminal capability negotiation, the phone can tell the net that it cannot receive pictures, and then the WAP gateway will not send them. There are many such tricks that make WAP/WML much more suitable for browsing on small screens with varying capabilities than HTML is.
I think that UMTS will solve most of the problems that people have with WAP, since these problems are caused by the data speed available in GSM. WAP (especially WML) can be used for UMTS as well as for GSM, except that you replace the lower protocol layers.
Since almost all mayor phone manufacturers support WAP, I do not think that I-Mode will have success in Europe. The underlying protocol layers that make I-Mode attractive (including always-on) are not supported by current mobile (GSM) networks in Europe, and will not be available until we get UMTS.
I agree that WAP is just an intermediate phase, because we have low data rates and really small screens. As soon as we get really cheap and light head-mounted displays and UMTS, there is no need for WAP anymore. But I-Mode will become obsolete at that time as well!
*Truusje
That said, I had some problems with the article.
First, the article states that WAP is targeted at premium users, but WAP access is really cheap. At least where I am. Verizon (c.f. worst possible choice) gives me WAP access for 4.95 / month additional to my normal rate and the phone only cost $30. Now I did have to sign the next 12 months of my life away, but that's Verizon for you.
Second, i_Mode's packet switching, always on, may be wonderful, but the best part of WAP is it works with existing networks. Verizon did not upgrade their network, they just added WAP servers. Much more attractive on a price level - for both consumer and provider.
Third, WAP is designed for low bandwidth cell phone use, but there's no reason why it can't scale to greater bandwidth or processing power. It has limits, but they haven't been reached.
That said, don't let this post sound like an endorsement of WAP or (good, God!) Verizon. The WAP consortium, or whatever, has developed a proprietary and abusive standards process and Verizon only occasionally gets my bill correct, not to mention the www.myvzw.com site blows chunks. WML isn't pretty and the implementations are worse. But it's here now and it's cheap.
That's why the web exploded in the first place. No one thought Netscrape was great, but it worked. No one thought dialup (or AOL) was great, but it worked, and people used it. Then better faster, cheaper solutions came along. The same will happen with wireless web.
The rise of the mobile phone has given momentum to the idea that people can be permanently connected via a web of communication, day or night, 365 days a year. And now with services like WAP/iMode, they can not only be connected with each other, they can be connected with the vast amount of data found online.
Does anyone else see the dangerous parallels between this and the actions of a hive mind? People are becoming less autonomous, more used to communicating their plans and ideas with others and receiving feedback before acting. Rather than allowing us to share information, mobile phones are acting as mechanisms which dampen individual creativity and instead encourage people to conform to the hive.
And with the advent of WAP/iMode, this trend is only getting worse. Why think for yourself when a premade answer is only a few button presses away? Sooner or later people will learn to stop thinking at all, for they will be connected to a grid in which everybody else can do their thinking for them. And rather than the wonderful quantities which make us unique, we'll all be drones, revelling in our powers of "communication".
No thanks, leave me out of this "revolution" in communication.
That I actually start longing for a monopoly. For infrastructure as important as wireless I can't stand seeing twenty friggin' towers and yet not a one is for my particular cell phone cause I can't find a signal.
Monopoly...wireless everywhere...then deregulation. That's the ticket.
Another difference is in the markup languages the two use, i-Mode uses c-HTML which is a subset of HTML while WAP uses WML which is a subset of XML. Although c-HTML is similar to HTML and easier for Web designers to use, XML is considered to be the Internet language of the future as HTML has limited capabilities.
Hmmm. /. story)
WML is not a sub-set of XML, it is an implmentation of XML. I think the idea of using XHTML instead of a totally new XML dialect (WML) is a good one. (recent
The replacement for HTML may one day be XHTML, but not pure XML. XML needs some form of implementation to make it work. --
DWR is Ajax for Java
Cooperation is a better answer than monopolies.
Take cash machines. I want to be able to use all cash machines. Solution one is having one bank so all cash machines are run by the same company. Solution two is all banks co-operate (like the link network in the UK) now I can use virtually all cash machines but there's still competition between banks.
I suppose mobile operators should co-operate and take calls from others networks when they're the only one avaliable.
Palm VII and its cousins are a much better choice for "wireless web" (or wireless whatever) than phones. The larger screen and pen input are much more useful and user-friendly.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
WAP just isn't for me, as it brings back the pay-per-online-time horror which I am so happy I could leave behind(cable-modem rules!)
And then consider it's much higher cost, and lower speed than your normal modem.
I think i-Mode's packet switched, always online network with a pre-determined price per month sounds much more attractive. And then I'm not even talking about the extra graphics possibilities!
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Once you're part of that group you're going to get listed on the DoCoMo portal interface on the imode phone and you'll see your traffic multiply by 50 - 60 times (according to a speaker from m.Ogilvy, Japan, at a recent talk I went to at BAFTA in London).
DoCoMo reckon that they will have 21 million users by the end of 2000, that's more than the number of people online in Japan via PC. Effectively the mobile phone becomes the primary point of internet access for more people than the desktop computer.
So even if the medium is crap, it will have superceded the computer in Japan... better take these people seriously...
I work for an internet company and we are currently working on a project to make our site WAP enabled. WHy are we using WAP, cause we have to. If we had a choice we would use I-Mode for several reasons.
1. WAP really isn't documented anywhere of what acutally works and what doesn't. Not to mention that every phone maker out there is using something different, It isn't really WAP, it is the bastard first child of what will become WAP in the next 6 months. There is limited support for full form functionality. And the emulators don't work consistently, thus, the phones don't work consistently, get my drift. For the Mr Rodger's neighborhood people," Can you say Cluster F*CK!"
2. Speed burns baby! WAP, at best can handle 9600. Whoo! now that is a screaming technology. But that is what it was built for, recieving text, not graphics, not games, text. I-mode however has been built for speed. In Japan they are playing network games over these things.
3. When WAP decided to come out, it thought, hell, we don't need no stinking http protocol, we will invent our own called WAP. yeah, great idea guys, did you forget to mention that you are re-inventing the wheel here or were we supposed to see something great and new. Basically they made a system where the phone contacts the provider which has a server, the server goes out to the site that they want and looks for WML files, the server crunches them and then sends them back to the phone. (at least, that is the way that it is supposed to work, I haven't had anyone prove that it works yet) This is really great, so this is basically a proxy server going to a web server and delivering a page that they can see on thier phone. Why not just use the TCP/IP and go hit a web page designed for a phone. If a server is set up correctly and the programmer has a clue, they will do some client checking and send the phones to a greatly stripped down page were all they see is the text, nothing fancy.
The japanese have thier stuff together, the question is, are we going to open our eyes and see it or are we going to get stomped in electronics.....again!