Business Idea

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asbb1

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Topic # 22061 15-May-2008 07:42

Anyone thought about making business WAP sites, as this is the perfect time to have one launched with the launch of the iphone in NZ, just a bit of a idea

mushion22

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Reply # 131044 15-May-2008 07:54

What do you mean by 'business wap sites'?

I know Telecom, and probably VF too, have the ability for corporate customers to customise a WAP home page and connect to Exchange OMA and various things.

Or do you mean creating WAP formatted websites to complement normal websites?

The iPhone has a decent Safari web browser which does pretty well at displaying normal websites, but there would probably be business for webdesigners who take exisiting sites and optimise them for MID (Mobile Internet Device) viewing, but this business should already exist seeing as there are plenty of phones/devices with web browsing capability.

'WAP' itself will be rendered dead when smartphones become the mainstream, there will just be web browsers that are smart at displaying normal web pages, and normal web pages that are optimised for being browsed by those broswers and perhaps browsers like Opera Mini that have a hosted dynamic optimisation service to reduce bandwidth.

EDIT: Spelling

sbiddle

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Reply # 131048 15-May-2008 08:08

WAP has pretty much died, there have been plenty of companies around over the years who have launched WAP sites but they have all pretty much failed miserably. Why? Because most people aren't even aware of how to do anything but enter the walled gardens their operators have (Vodafone Live! and Telecom's WAP portal) and using sites outside these were so expensive that people couldn't afford to view them. Remember that for many years Telecom charged $50 per MB to access data that wasn't on their own WAP side and if you don't have a data plan with Vodafone (75% of their customers don't since they are on prepay) you're still paying $10 per MB for data.

The iPhone and other recent smart phones have pretty much killed WAP in a sence since they are far more capable than the mobile web browers that we had 5 years ago.

steve98

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Reply # 131049 15-May-2008 08:16

asbb1:
Anyone thought about making business WAP sites, as this is the perfect time to have one launched with the launch of the iphone in NZ, just a bit of a idea

The iPhone doesn't use WAP at all, the web browser on board is a fully-fledged 'proper' web browser that displays the same HTML web pages that you would browse on your home computer. I am guessing you mean the kind of iPhone-optimised sites you would find here.

Steve

freitasm

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Reply # 131050 15-May-2008 08:20

asbb1:
Anyone thought about making business WAP sites, as this is the perfect time to have one launched with the launch of the iphone in NZ, just a bit of a idea

As stated your business idea won't fly at all - the iPhone doesn't understand WAP and other smartphones (Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Symbian) all have web browsers.

What operators need for a "business idea" is to get decent prices for their mobile Internet. That's all.

Mauricio Freitas (Geekzone Admin, Devil's Advocate, my blog, technology disclosure)