WAP is Dead, Long Live WAP

antimatt writes "Everyone knows WAP is dead. It was dead on arrival. Right? Wrong. WAP use, at least in the UK, is up 42% in the last year. Are we seeing postmortem twitching, or a phoenix rising from the wireless ashes?" While the first incarnation was pretty rough, WAP is slowly growing into what people had hoped the first version would be. Now if only it just lost the stigma attached to it.

Comments

And stay dead!

[Onan]

We already have a language which was designed to scale very far up or down, and to adapt itself to disparate display environments: HTML.

And if people would just use it as intended, rather than trying to smother it in ecmascript, flash, et al, we wouldn't need to come up with a whole new protocol every time a new display gadget becomes popular.

Re:And stay dead!

[FrankHaynes]

with the modern phones any decently put together site is viewable pretty well, as long as the creators weren't too narrow minded.

That qualification just excluded a good number of sites. I do occasional work at an art college and their web design class there focuses on how to gum up your web site with Flash widgets and scripts and animation...completely disregarding that a growing number of web site visitors on mobile devices will be unable or unwilling to partake of that 'rich user experience' that gobbles up their costly bandwidth. The kids eat this stuff up without any comprehension of the impact on the user, based on my discussions with some of them who take that class.

WAP will stay dead as long as narrow-minded people want to show the world how 'artistic' they can be, whether it takes the form of HTML, XHTML, XML, etc.; these just provide more ways for thoughtless web authors to paint themselves and their hapless clients into a corner.

Re:And stay dead!

[Serveert]

Gee why didn't the designers of WAP think of that. You're good.

Oh wait a minute. They did think of that. And they realized that WML, which is easier to parse and supporrts soft keys, decks, etc, is better suited for small phones which often lack a large screen as well as sufficient CPU to parse HTML.. ie you can have tags without in HTML vs XML or WML which don't allow that, you must have a closing tag. HTML implementation is really one big hack, any decent HTML parser is nasty.

Fortunately they waited for XHTML which has more strict tag guidelines (Sorry no without ) and is really a wonderful standard which meets the desktop browser and phone browser requirements.

The real reason...

[Spad]

The only reason the usage has gone up is that everyone's using WAP to cheat on pub quizzes by using Google.

My main problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

My main problem with wap was that it costed 10p/minute. I used it a bit when I had a month for free, but haven't used it since. What's the point in investing huge amounts of money in something, and then making it so expensive that no one will use it?

Must be the branding

[Lispy]

Most new phones, at least over here in germany, are branded by the provider. Of course it is technically possible to flash the software but most users keep whatever their phone carries.

This means that some keys are preprogrammed to dialup the default GPRS-connection whenever they get pressed (mostly by accident when the phone is in the pocket and you forgot to lock the keyboard). Maybe the service gets really more popular but I would love to see a statistic that shows how many connections are dialed by mistake.

Wap is too limited

[rokzy]

My phone has the real internet, though the more compicated sites don't work right.

WAP's problem is the developer has to put in extra effort just to deliver a crappy version.

XHTML and the real internet is the future. Flash is a cancer.

greece ruled :P

[topgan1]

wap was never alive :)...at least in Greece.

Where's the f'ing CONTENT?

[SlashChick]

This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I own (and love) a Treo 600. Got it for $400 on eBay; the best $400 I've ever spent. I love being able to SSH, send and recevie email, and log onto AIM from my phone! However, online wireless content is severely lacking.

My worst pet peeve about the wireless world in general is that there just isn't enough content out there designed for mobile devices. Ever tried to load movies.yahoo.com on a Treo? Even at 144K speeds (twice as fast as a 56K modem), the movies.yahoo.com page takes forever to load because it's a 250K+ page. How about citysearch.com? Also horribly bloated.

I have Small Sites set up as my home page on my Treo, but most of the sites it links to are outdated, toast, or horribly broken. For instance, Yahoo! Movies is on there, but is often broken ("Page not found", anyone?) Citysearch or a comparable site doesn't even make the list.

Why can't I log on, type in my zip code, and get movies, restaurants, maps, and driving directions from my Treo? That's 90% of what I need WAP for. But the "portal" sites seem like an artifact of the dot-com boom -- missing or outdated information, or whole pages that just don't work.

Yahoo/other portal companies, are you listening? Please create a WAP or "wireless-web"-capable interface for me (and the thousands of others like me who know how frustrating it is to load a 200K page on a Treo or similar device.)

New Technology Lifecycle

[Bubblehead]

(1) New technology gets developed;
(2) Corporations see the potential, and start huge marketing campaigns;
(3) Industy trend setter (Wired, etc.) hype the technology beyond means;
(4) Technology doesn't deliver, because it isn't mature yet (and applications are missing);
(5) Industry trend setter declare the technology dead;
(6) Surprise - years later, the technology has a comeback, often without ordinary folks even noticing.

I have seen this happening often (Java, Bluetooth, etc.), and it seems to happen again. I once heard that new technologies, no matter whether software or otherwise, take an average of seven years to mature. Java is a great example: Released in 1995, and hyped like crazy, failed to deliver. Interestingly enough, it got hyped as a web language and succeeded in the enterprise.

Back to WAP: The article acknowledges this mechanism:

"WAP has such a negative stigma attached to it because that's what carriers marketed several years ago, rather than what could be done with WAP"

Pure marketing hype, without knowing how to deliver.

"... the technology got the blame for misguided and poorly implemented content."

Like with Java, the application of the technology was not yet completely understood.

"The majority of users don't care how their phone gets the news headlines or sports scores"

... the same way that most users don't care whether the sites they visit are driven by JSP, PHP or ASP. I bet most uses think Java is dead (if they even know what it is). Likewise, myst users don't care about WAP.

Let's face it: Most technologies get only powerful and influencial once they are not sexy any more - and even then only geeks will notice.

And that one stinks too!

[SlashChick]

Adding to my earlier rant in this same article, what's up with the Slashdot WAP page? Sure, the articles are nice, but "Top 5 comments" only? How useful is that?

Why doesn't Slashdot have an option to view the whole article including comments? Better yet, why can't we view the article in "light" mode without all that crufty table formatting?

Perhaps I'm asking for a lot from a site that still uses HTML 3.2 (and can't even seem to conform to that standard), but honestly, folks, it's not 1998 any more. There are a lot of people out there who would love to view Slashdot and other sites through Palm-type browsers, but when there's no content, there's not much reason to do so. Phones are becoming more and more advanced, but very few websites seem to be pushing the cutting edge in mobile compatibility.

Re:And that one stinks too!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is NO reason Slashdot can't be viewed on a WAP phone - except for the laziness of the people who run it. This bloated crap they call slashcode produces about 1000% of the volume of data it needs to. There is no reason you couldn't view all comments and links on any post-2000 browser phone.

But efficiency, what's that? It's that thing you whine at Microsoft not having. Back to watching anime, boys.

Compact WAP

[BillsPetMonkey]

Following the miserable failure of WAP/bug-ridden implementation of WMLScript, lack of graphical api (Oooh lets use bitmap picture files for low bandwidth devices!) and poor user recognition, a new paradigm in WAP is coming, based on NTT Docomo's HTML subset called cHTML ...

It's known as "Compact WAP".

Or "cWAP" for short.

step aboard the cluetrain ...

[mqx]

We're supposed to be the insightful techies here, but obviously most people missed the cluetrain on this one:

The issue with WAP was never with the protocol itself, it was with the uselessly small LCD interface on phones that made it clunky and entirely non-user-friendly, not to mention the poor transport layer.

The standard 2004 digital mobile phone has larger and more useful display and keyboard interface, not to mention higher datarates thanks to GPRS -- meaning that any protocol (not just WAP) is far more useful.

I'm sure if you look at the statistics, you'll find that not only has WAP usage increased, but so has that of other features commensurate with the better phone UI.

Re:step aboard the cluetrain ...

[timpaton]

The issue with WAP was ... the uselessly small LCD interface on phones...The standard 2004 digital mobile phone has larger and more useful display and keyboard interface

And therein lies the entire problem of "convergent technologies".

I don't want to go back to the bad old days of walking around with half a brick in my hip pocket. I don't want a larger and more useful display and keyboard. If I want to carry 30GB of MP3s and a camera, I'll get an Ipod-like-device and a camera.

But for most of the time, I just want a very small, very light, unobtrusive device for making and receiving telephone calls in the times when I'm not in front of a computer.

But experience has shown time and again that I'm out-of-step with the average user's needs.

I see parallels between WAP's return from the dead and SMS. My first GSM phone (which was a cheap out-of-date Motorola in 1997) was entirely able to send and receive SMS.

Suddenly, in about 2001, SMS was an amazing new technology that everybody wanted to use. Suddenly there was talk about SMS on landline phones, because people couldn't live without it. I'm sure most of them _had_ been living without it for the previous 5 years, carrying around a SMS-capable phone, with no knowledge of what to do with it.

By contrast, WAP had a triumphant launch, and was going to change the world. Everybody carried around WAP-enabled phones, with no knowledge of what to do with it. Now, as others have said, providers are using WAP as a medium for delivering content...and it's starting to take off, because it has a purpose.

Oh well. I just bought new phone. It's tiny, it's light, it's unobtrusive, and it has no WAP capability. I use it to make and receive phone calls when I'm not in front of a computer. It's novel, I know, but it works for me.

Stigma, what stigma?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only it just lost the stigma attached to it.

You wouldn't by any chance mean 2x20 character displays, speed only comparable with modems that went the way of Dodo in 1993, pay-per-second pricing plans that would make Rockefeller think twice, and so much support from mobile carriers that not even a bacteria could live on it. Yes, you could call that a stigma.

On the other hand, we now have affordable color displays, pixel resolutions approaching that of VGA, GRPS that goes more than a tad faster than your vintage 9600 modem, pay-per-kb pricing plans that try to hook as many users as possible, and strong portal support from each and every mobile carrier. Now that I think goes a long way in explaining the raise in WAP usage...

Stigma or no stigma, the first and foremost question with WAP was what is it useful for. Up until recently the cost and effort to use anything WAP based was so high that there was really no content that was worth it. Now that the price to use it went radicaly down, speed had gone radicaly up, and displays have vastly improved, people just use it like they use any other cheap and useful service. You want latest headlines? Go WAP. Weather prognosis? Go WAP. Road conditions? Go WAP. Is it a wonder?

Anonymous Cowards Unite

Re:One more user ..

[panaceaa]

Agreed. Can't 42% just be contributed to people accidentally putting their unlocked phones in their pockets, plus the greater adoption of WAP-enabled phones?

I know I end up with 50 cents a month of WAP charges because I do dumb things like that with my new WAP-enabled phone. I've not once purposely gone to a WAP page though.

Re:The problem with WAP

[cindy]

Please mod the parent up.

It isn't really WAP that sucks. WAP's biggest problem is that browser support for WAP sucks. If you don't have compliance - or consistant non-compliance - there's no way to create WAP that will work properly for users of more than one network. (Hell, you can't write content for users of more than one PHONE!) Add to the mix slow, buggy servers and a lack of commitment from the consortium participants and you have the mess that WAP is now.

Neither the FA nor the A referenced by the FA says anything about what version of WAP is being used, or whether the WAP being used is compliant or not, just that GPRS is making it easier to serve it. My guess is that Orange and Sony/Ericson are using their own extended versions and are probably tieing the users to WAP served over their own networks. They control the tagset, the server, and the content. What incentive is there for content creators outside of the wireless companies to get involved?

Re:One more user ..

[minginqunt]

The reason it's taking off is that WAP 2.0 has many advantages over the frankly execrable 1.x series.

1.0 was based on WML and a proprietary binary proxying protocol.

2.0 is based on XHTML Basic, TLS and IPv6. So, basically, WAP 2.0 *is* the web for phones.

Also unlike 1.0, 2.0 appears to work, m-Payment included.

And perhaps most crucially, the WAP branding has been completely abandoned. WAP may be broken in people's minds. But "Vodafone LIVE!" and "O2 Zones" "Orange Wirefree Web" all seem to work perfectly. And that's basically what Vodafone et al. call WAP 2.0

Is this when I say "I told you so"

[Serveert]

WAP = Wireless Application Protocol

It used to be only WML (Well WMLC, compiled WML) that was sent over WAP, now it's XHTML. This is a convergence between desktop markup and wireless markup. In anycase they were right in that WML was dead. Unfortunately for them you can put anything over WAP even MMS traffic.

I have laughed and laughed as people claimed that WAP was dead meanwhile I log into gateway servers and see WAP traffic increase.

Maybe people will listen to me now? nah. ;)

BBC Mobile is my home page

[Macka]

I'm in the UK, and since getting a new Sony Ericsson K700i a month ago, my WAP use has really taken off. It's so much faster than the last time I tried using it. But half of that experience depends on the sites you go to. I'm with Orange, and their WAP sites really suck. Too many graphics on them make them slower than average to load and navigate.

The best site I've come across so far is bbc.co.uk/mobile. It's quick to load because it's very light on graphics, and the content is just everything I need when I'm away from my PowerBook. From the most recent news stories, to Traffic information. The latter is especially useful, as I can quickly search for accidents/road works on the Motorways (Freeways) I plan my use on my journey. And from time to time, when I unexpectedly find myself stuck in a traffic jam and I want to know what's happened ahead to cause it.

I even used WAP recently to check the horse racing result for a friend who wanted to know if she'd won on a bet she'd placed that morning. I found the site and had the results up in minutes. Oh, and she had won too.

It really is a hell of a lot more useful than it used to be.

Is the article quoting correctly?

[horza]

I'm sorry but where does the 1.1 billion come from in the link to ZDNET it quotes? The quoted article states WAP views have doubled to "22.5 million impressions". I quote:
Figures released by the Mobile Data Association (MDA) show that use of the most popular mobile data services, including SMS, MMS and WAP, have all doubled over the past year and it expects WAP traffic to reach eight billion impressions by the end of 2004. (emphasis mine)

It hardly rates as a popular mobile service. In the UK alone 111 million SMS messages were sent just on New Years Eve. Here it states 2.1 billion text messages were sent last year in the UK alone. That makes WAP traffic seem pretty miniscule.

Basically WAP is rubbish and always has been. The decision to charge an obscene amount per minute killed it. Even if mobile operators offered free WAP (which they won't) and instead creamed profit off transactions, the stigma is so bad no-one will go near it. WAP is definately dead. Even before phones started getting powerful enough to have proper embedded web browsers.

Phillip.