HONG KONG-The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is generally regarded with something between scorn and indifference in Hong Kong among industry sources, and mobile operators will not even reveal subscriber numbers for the service.
This contrasts with the bullish claims of Scott Goldman, chief executive officer (CEO) of the WAP Forum, who said: “We think that the potential in the Asia-Pacific region is huge because all of the factors that typically indicate a very healthy WAP market are present.” Goldman referred specifically to a population that is “adoptive” of new technology and an information-intensive lifestyle among the factors that would encourage WAP applications.
In fact, subscribers have been disappointed with WAP’s clumsy, slow interface and the nonappearance of the exciting new applications expected from it.
For example, games are popular in Asia, and Giles Corbett, CEO of In-Fusio, a French developer of cell-phone games, recently predicted, “China, Hong Kong and Japan will lead the world in transforming digital mobile handsets into interactive game consoles.”
Yet In-Fusio’s Execution Engine (ExEn) technology, which gives access to a games library and will be used by Hong Kong operator Sunday and China Unicom in the mainland, does not need WAP access.
Sony and DoCoMo recently announced they will develop solutions that will allow subscribers to play PlayStation2 games on i-mode phones. Like some other developers, they seem to consider they will get more from creating a custom solution than using WAP’s standardized environment.
WAP has not made much of an impression on other applications either. “Some services, such as the stock market and horse racing, were available pre-WAP, using SIM toolkit technology,” said Yvonne Chan, telecom analyst with McKinsey & Co. “You could get daily horse tips by a `pro’ via a voice message and be alerted in real-time when your selected stock hit a certain pre-chosen price. The question users would have with the WAP service is: Is it any better than what was available before, and if so, will it cost more?” she said.
Walled garden
One reason WAP is popular among operators is because it provides control of content and potentially the revenue generated via the WAP gateway. Some local operators have opted for the “walled garden” approach, preventing subscribers from accessing each other’s content, even with short messaging services (SMS).
“Unfortunately, the six operators in Hong Kong are not cooperating to enable SMS messages to be sent between rival networks, which greatly hampers the uptake of the service,” she said.
Yvonne Chan contrasts the walled garden in Hong Kong with the i-mode model used in Japan, in which anyone could offer “just about anything” to DoCoMo customers, and the operator does not take a cut except for billing services. “If the service was unpopular, DoCoMo didn’t suffer. In Hong Kong, the operators are developing content as well as selectively sourcing it externally. Look at it this way: the Internet wouldn’t have taken off if content were tied to individual ISPs,” she said.
Mark Chan of operator Sunday said the walled-garden label was applicable to Hong Kong carriers only in the initial stages of WAP, when some operators raced to acquire the most content, tying it with exclusive contracts and discouraging subscribers from going to other sites.
It is clear change is in the air now. “At Sunday, WAP subscribers can use `My Link’ that allows them to access their favorite WAP sites, and they then can bookmark that site for easy access through the operator’s WAP gateway,” he said.
People’s Telephone also claims to have an open portal, allowing its users to access any WAP site, and SmarTone announced its Funland games will be available to other operators’ subscribers.
Emulating i-mode
Although i-mode has not been implemented in Hong Kong, there is strong interest in the applications that made i-mode successful in Japan. For example, Hutchison Telecom has arranged to give its WAP users exclusive access in Hong Kong to one of Japan’s most successful games, Miracle Grand Prix (GP). In Japan, Miracle GP gets 10 million page requests per month from its 30,000 registered players. The game is a product of Hudson Soft, but NTT DoCoMo was instrumental to the agreement between Hutchison Telecom and Hudson. Hutchison Telecom intends to obtain several more games through similar arrangements.
I-mode’s success in Japan makes it an attractive model, even though it apparently cannot yet compete with WAP as a global standard development platform. According to PCCW Mobility Services, all Hong Kong operators are currently offering i-mode-like services, such as PCCW Mobility’s i.menu mobile portal offering. Both the browser and customized phones, two unique features of i-mode, will be improved over time with WAP and GSM services.
One view is that it is too early to judge how wireless Internet content will be affected by WAP, which is very well founded as a technical standard and widely supported.
As Tony Ma, manager of m-commerce development for wireless carrier Peoples Telephone, said: “WAP content available is still in the infant stage. As 2.5G (2.5-generation) systems become popular, the access environment will catalyze the creation of the mobile content market in Hong Kong.”
