Report Asks: Is It Time To Blow Taps For WAP?

WHEATON, MD. — WAP-based microbrowser technology faces high hurdles preventing its widespread use by consumers, and location-based WAP services won't help, Herschel Shosteck Associates said in a new report.

"Subscriber interest in paying for WAP services has been nominal," the report said. "It is still designed to create value for network operators rather than end users, is slow (in speed of service delivery as well as protocol development), and is virtually useless on any device other than a phone."

WAP could benefit tremendously from marrying WAP with location-based content services, but it will still "not be a panacea for the poor WAP end-user experience," even though "location relevance makes WAP content richer without requiring large screens or draining batteries more quickly."

In fact, WAP won't greatly foster widespread adoption of location-based services. "Location-based content is just one of many services which will be seriously impeded by the lack of a compelling delivery platform for mobile phones — in other words, by WAP," the report said.

WAP is "slowly being dismembered and modified by proprietary solutions sitting upon the WAP platform," fragmenting the market and "resulting in slower overall adoption [of data services] for the industry, "the report noted.

Other technologies, such as Sun's J2ME Qualcomm's BREW, and I-Mode — "will lure end-users and applications developers away from WAP," the report added.