The growth of the WAP industry is surprising many investors and watchers that were not really counting on the resurrection of WAP after the failed attempt in previous years. The problem on many people’s minds was that even if software and web whizzes manage to create a new interface for WAP that is acceptable for consumer use, they would not be able to keep it clear form grey-area practices such as keyword dumping, internet piracy and online transaction fraud. But this too has been proven wrong.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has become the new “WAP-Police” with the mission to clear all mobile sites for positive and constructive use. Within a year, W3C has come up with a new set of codes and regulations that all WAP hosts have to adhere to in order to comply for acceptance in the WAP community. These rules include a limit on the number of keyword phrases that are used in articles as well as preset formats for websites that allow WAP sites to be viewed effectively on all WAP supporting mobile devices.
Mobile Websites; the easy way to do things
WAP sites are becoming more useful day by day. Almost 3 times the amount of people use WAP related services now than they did 3 years ago. In fact, the number of WAP related service users in 2004 was a staggering 200 million, and this has grown to almost 500 million in 2007. That means e-businesses have the potential to influence almost half a billion people, to market their products and services.
But the growth has not been favorable only to the business sector. People have developed a need for WAP related informational services and financial services in their day to day routine. Among the 500 million WAP users, the most dominant use of this service has been for train table information, flight information, purchasing flight tickets, checking weather conditions, checking stock values, searching phone directories as well as searching for addresses. So the use of WAP for the consumer market is quickly becoming the way to do things.