News of WAP’s demise greatly exaggerated

News reports around the globe today are indicating the GSM Association (GSMA) is supporting another wireless Internet standard in lieu of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) standard.

In reality, GSMA has created a new Mobile Services Initiative designed to establish a common baseline of features based on existing standards that application developers and content providers can depend upon in designing and developing wireless Internet services.

The GSMA said it is concerned about fragmentation in the handset market and the inability to depend on specific handset features. To address the fragmentation, the GSMA has published feature guidelines for handsets to help ensure that operators will be able to depend on a certain set of consistent features and services in mobile phones based on existing standards such as WAP, SyncML and Java.

“It really is more of a set of guidelines and initiatives around which [GSM carriers] are seeking to deploy new services,” said Jonathan Ruff, senior director with Motorola. “Motorola applauds this because it makes it a lot more focused and easier to deliver solutions that customers want from us. … We’re behind it because it builds very much on a number of activities we’ve been working with such as Java and WAP.”

The services the GSMA would like to see more uniformity around include enhanced graphics, music, video, games, ring tones and screen savers.

Ratification and publication of the M-Services guidelines doesn’t mean that it’s a requirement for all handset makers to support the guidelines, the GSMA noted. Some operators may insist on purchasing only phones that meet the M-Services guidelines, while others may buy a mix of phones for their various target markets. Vendors such as Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola have announced support for the new guidelines.

The guidelines will list a number of options in key features, such as the graphical user interface and the download capability. Operators who desire one option over another must state their requirement explicitly, said the GSMA.