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WAP
Service - What is it?
WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) Service is defined as an application environment and set of communication protocols for wireless devices designed to enable manufacturers and vendors to have technology-independent access to the Internet and advanced telephony services.
Currently this service is only available through digital carriers. Digital technology offers a much higher capacity to send data in packets to and from the Internet to the cellular phone. This technology is not owned by any specific company to date.
Although it does allow for access to the Internet, you shouldn't expect it to be the next web browser of the future. It has limitations and restrictions since a cellular phone is not a computer and has a very small memory. Rather, the phone is built with a mini browser that allows you to review stock price information, weather & entertainment news, etc. for the time being. We have yet to see any significant progress in enabling shopping online via your cellular phone. That is not to say it won't become a possibility but it will probably become more of an information gathering resource.
Nor can you use just any cellular phone with the WAP service. Depending on the phone that you have, it may require an upgrade or your purchasing a brand new phone that has the WAP capability enabled. The marketing hype for WAP phones is at this time overly high. The fact is that there is a severe shortage of WAP cellular phones. Most of the phones currently in use are referred to as "Pre-WAP" cellular phones, meaning that they do not have the software installed prior to purchase. Even now, the WAP software is evolving, leaving the initial version 1.1 almost obsolete before it is readily available to the public.
The way the WAP service works is that you open the browser on the cellular phone and your service provider sends a encrypted message to the website visited which then returns the requested information to the user. To access some WAP enabled web sites, you may be required to use your phone keypad to type in the URL and then bookmark it if you plan on visiting it again in the future. We call it "thumb typing". It is the same thing you would do with typing in a name to be stored in the memory locations for speed dialing. The cellular phone keypad has been lettered just like your home phone.
The web site is not given your cellular number although Sprint PCS was targeted for doing so. They stated they would be changing those practices. Airtouch Cellular doesn't disclose phone numbers to web sites, Bell Atlantic creates separate IP addresses, and AT&T Wireless uses random numbers to identify customers that access Internet web pages via a WAP phone.
One item to keep in mind is that the carriers do not guarantee that your cellular phone number is not embedded in a web site outside of an "affiliated" web site. Basically, they are referring to web sites that are not allied with the carrier and thus given premium space.
An interesting development on the market is the PDA/Cellular phone hybrid that manufacturers were looking to have out by the summertime of 2000. With any new product the price is a bit higher when it first rolls out but the price will always come down.
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The Future of WAP
Although the WAP service has unlimited potential, it is unclear as to what the future of WAP will hold for cellular phone users. The manufactures will continue to look at WAP to try and find what cellular phone users desire in regards to information and services. Over 75% of the cellular service related companies in the world support WAP service as a viable technology. The predictions being made about WAP service use was that there would be about 100 million wireless users subscribing to WAP service by the end of 2000. The predictions were found to be far into left field. Only 1% of the predicted number of cell phone users are actually subscribing to WAP service to date.
However, the reality of WAP phone purchases has yet to set in with the carriers and manufacturers. Consumers just aren't buying the hype about WAP service. What is the current demand for such a service and what does its future look like? How about the survey suggesting that nearly 60% of wireless users don't want or need WAP service. The other 40% were divided up into seven other reasons that accounted for single digit percentages as to why they wouldn't buy WAP service. Price was the exception, however, it only accounted for 13% of those surveyed.
Leaving carriers/manufacturers with 27% of wireless users that they have to find out how if possible to lure these people into using WAP service. 4% didn't have a reason for not wanting it, 5% said it was too complicated and wasn't worth the time. The "other reasons" category came in with 9%. Then we have 4% stating that WAP didn't have info they would want or it lacks value. The remainder would fall into the category of the service not being available in their area.
Doesn't look like there is much room for the carriers to move in here. TV Guide seems to think people will use their WAP phones to see which shows are airing at a specific time. The partnerships are mostly with the smaller carriers such as AT&T Wireless and Sprint PCS. None of the large carriers such as Verizon and Cingular have agreed to carry TV Guide as a service to mobile phone users to date.
With the hype, you had large corporations saying that WAP was the next best thing to sliced bread because their customers could shop using a WAP phone. Small businesses were in an uproar because they were being left out. Doesn't look like the small business has much to worry about after all.
The current trend is that only major corporations will be available to that 1% of WAP enabled consumers to shop with the WAP service. Small businesses will probably not be able to compete with larger corporations that have the available staff to maintain web sites for the purpose of using WAP service. With that in mind, diversity will probably be a limited commodity with using WAP cellular phones. The major corporations having the monopoly on WAP phone service may change in the future. There are already companies out there looking to develop software that will allow a standard web site to be automatically converted to WAP programming language. It will probably be a few more years or more before WAP enabled web pages will be within the budget of a small business.
We expect that prepaid WAP phones will also become available in the future. They are currently in development but with the shortage of cellular phones, it could be a while before we seen them being offered en masse.
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WAP Phone Spam
With every new technology comes another avenue to spam consumers. WAP phones are now being targeted as the next potential channel to spam consumers. Companies are lining up in droves in the hopes of sending you their advertisements. These companies are drooling so much that an entrepreneur selling bibs should get in on the action.
At the time of this writing, it is mostly the fast food joints who are looking to get in on this run to spam WAP phones. Of course, it is the vulnerable teenagers who are the target market. Here is the strategy being rolled out. Target teenagers and they will tell their parents who will tell their friends that everyone can be spammed on their WAP phones and be happy about it.
Why would you want to get spam on your WAP phone? That should be obvious or so the online companies pushing this form of advertising would think. Getting a discount by running to your local fast food joint and showing them the coupon flashing on your WAP phone is more than enough incentive. It looks like these companies have bought into the WAP phone hype so much that it is now gospel to them.
There are three problems with this type of marketing hype. First, WAP service isn't on fire with the sales it is generating. Secondly, the number of teenagers with a WAP phone are extremely limited. Third, these companies haven't quite figured out yet that most consumers absolutely detest spam of any kind no matter what it is for or how it is sent.
We have a solution to the problem. The first being to fire the individual(s) doing the market research and analysis for being incompetent. The next order of business then would be to rewrite the business model so that spamming WAP phones wasn't the primary source of revenue or dissolve the business and chalk it up to experience. Now that sounds like a sensible plan.
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