WAP Still Popular As Autumn Rears Its Head

Mobile phone users continued to embrace their handsets’ data capacity throughout September, with the latest figures from the Mobile Data Association recording a 20.4% increase year on year in the number of WAP pages viewed by UK mobile phone customers.

According to the MDA’s new figures, a total of 1.08 billion WAP page impressions were made during September and, allowing for seasonal differences, growth is expected to reach a total of 13 billion for 2004 as a whole.

The latest statistics underline the seemingly unstoppable rise in mobile technology, following research released last month showing that almost half of all mobile customers can now access the internet via their mobile phones (see Half Of UK Mobile Customers Now Use WAP Services).

The MDA recently held the Mobile Data Awards in London, commending those operators making particularly good use of data services. Amongst the finalists for the most innovative use of WAP and associated browser technologies were Vodafone for Vodafone Live and T-Mobile for T-Zones.

However, it was a firm called Bango which scooped the award for developing a globally accessible, cross-operator platform, making mobile internet content easily accessible to everyone with a phone. To date, Bango has managed to bring the mobile data (if not Internet) experience to over 22 million users.

Mobile Data Association: 01922 419600 www.mda-mobiledata.org

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