'Crappy' WAP Bridging Gap
Source: Wired.com
As soon as they started getting thumb cramps and eyestrain from browsing the Web on their mobile phones, American consumers immediately shunned the so-called mobile Internet.
The wireless application protocol -- WAP for short -- became a beacon for epithets.
WAP is crap" was a popular refrain. Some frustrated users said WAP stands for "what a pity." The "growing epidemic of WAPlash" struck fear into the hearts and minds of hopeful early adopters who wanted a scaled-down version of Web content on their cell phones.
Now, the people who invented and (over)sold WAP say they agree with the criticism.
"The WAP protocol browsing experience was simply and is clearly not tuned for the phone," said Thomas Reardon, vice president of Openwave, the software company that pioneered WAP. "It set the expectation that people would get the Netscape-browsing Internet experience on their phones. 'WAP is crap,' in that sense, was fair."
But Reardon hasn't given up on WAP altogether.
His company, Openwave (OPWV) remains an active member of the WAP Forum. Openwave, whose WAP browser is embedded in 70 percent of all handsets on the market, is banking on the success of WAP 2.0 -- the latest version of the protocol that is a hybrid of XML (extensible markup language) and HTML.
