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Move beyond voice

Mobile phone owners are embracing a multitude of mobile services these days. In addition to making and receiving calls, the latest mobile phones offer a lot of features like built-in camera, games, text messaging, internet connectivity through GPRS, Bluetooth, etc. Currently, text messaging is catching on with a more than half of the population. Better mobile handsets play a major part in encouraging consumers to try text and to make this an easier activity for them. This technology has changed the way people interact with mobile phones. Text messaging is indeed a simple yet powerful communication medium for mobile phone users.

Another type of mobile messaging which is gaining popularity is MMS (Multimedia messaging service). The growth of MMS will mirror the growth of camera phones. MMS allow you to send picture messages and share it with others. As the network of MMS capable handsets grows, there is an increase in sending pictures between phones by MMS.

Mobile phone companies such as Motorola, LG, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and many more have seen their profits sore since the introduction of camera mobile phones. Various networks like Orange, 3 Mobile, T Mobile, O2, Vodafone, Virgin etc offer free camera phone with special deals. The larger colour screen of camera phones makes the mobile phone an interesting and leisure device. These phones allow you to take an excellent photo and set it as the background image in your phone.

WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) adoption has partly been slowed historically by an unattractive, slow and text based user interface. WAP allows mobile phone users to have access to information services. The WAP enabled mobile phone can be connected to the internet instantly and can access any internet service immediately. Colour camera phones tend to support GPRS connectivity and also icon based graphical interface. This makes WAP a far more convincing user experience, and hence is increasing strong WAP adoption. All these features make a mobile phone more than just a device for handling calls.

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Why WAP isn’t as bad as people say

It’s unlucky that the acronym for Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) has such an unfortunate rhyme! Even more unlucky for WAP, it burst onto the mobile communication scene with lavish promises from the Mobile Operators (you know who you are) of ‘The Internet on your Mobile’ and ‘Take the Internet with you’.

That really was a load of WAP.

So, a few years on we can ask, like Frankie Goes to Hollywood, ‘WAP, what is it good for’?

More than you might think, given the current deafening silence from those same Mobile Operators.

The rise (and rise) of SMS is instructive. This has gone from nowhere to everywhere with practically no promotion from the networks. Type SMS into Google and you get 52 million hits! In China in 2003, 220 Billion SMS messages were sent. During 2003 in the UK alone, 30 Billion were sent, which equates to 500 for every man, woman and child in the entire country! What is going on here?

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Wap is Crap

WAP is crap and the growing epidemic of WAPlash are two of the familiar taunts repeated by users of phones with wireless application protocol browsers, which allow users to access so-called Web content on their phones.

WAP has received a bad rap, not only from the media, but also from users of WAP phones who choose not to access data on them. Less than 20 percent of Americans with phones that have WAP browsers actually ever access WAP sites, according to Jupiter Communications analyst Lucas Graves. Only 10 percent of Sprint PCS’ customers access the “wireless Web,” according to Jay Highly, vice president of business marketing for Sprint PCS.

It’s cumbersome to input data on a phone’s keypad and read from such a tiny screen, analysts say. Data is transmitted slowly at 9 kbs and the user pays airtime for the content.

However, don’t blame WAP as a technology for the lack of interest in the phones, analysts say. Perhaps WAP developers are to blame for over-hyping the technology and then receiving a black eye for it, but some think the real limitation of WAP is the lack of compelling content written in its wireless markup language (WML).

On the other hand, software developer Openwave has 14 million subscribers worldwide — which means there’s little interest when compared to the 70 million WAP-enabled handsets that have been sold.

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Wap Basics

WAP Homepages

WAP homepages are not very different from HTML homepages. The markup language used for WAP is WML (Wireless Markup Language). WML uses tags – just like HTML – but the syntax is stricter and conforms to the XML 1.0 standard.

WML pages have the extension *.WML, just like HTML pages have the extension *.HTML.

WML Tags

WML is mostly about text. Tags that would slow down the communication with handheld devices are not a part of the WML standard. The use of tables and images is strongly restricted.

Since WML is an XML application, all tags are case sensitive ( is not the same as ), and all tags must be properly closed.

WML Decks and Cards

WML pages are called DECKS. They are constructed as a set of CARDS, related to each other with links. When a WML page is accessed from a mobile phone, all the cards in the page are downloaded from the WAP server. Navigation between the cards is done by the phone computer – inside the phone – without any extra access trips to the server.

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What is Wap?

The wireless industry came up with the idea of WAP. The point of this standard was to show internet contents on wireless clients, like mobile phones.

• WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol
• WAP is an application communication protocol
• WAP is used to access services and information
• WAP is inherited from Internet standards
• WAP is for handheld devices such as mobile phones
• WAP is a protocol designed for micro browsers
• WAP enables the creating of web applications for mobile devices
• WAP uses the mark-up language WML (not HTML)
• WML is defined as an XML 1.0 application

People on the move need services, information and entertainment that can keep up with them. With access to mobile services, decisions and interactions happen here and now. The value of mobile services to end-users is boosted by three separate elements: personalization, time-sensitivity and location awareness. Combining these three effectively adds even more value.

Wireless application protocol (WAP) is a protocol that has successfully established a de facto standard for the way in which wireless technology is used for Internet access. WAP technology has been optimized for information delivery to thin-client devices, such as mobile phones.

Mobile services powered by Nokia and WAP have been widely accepted by users. By 2004, the number of WAP users in Western Europe is estimated to grow to well over 200 million (source: Cahners, In-Stat Group). In part, this growth is driven by the introduction of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), WAP 2.0, Bluetooth and Mobile Commerce.

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