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1. Lithuania's WAP-Beginnings
2. Lucent and Clearnet in Canada
3. Games for Sprint PCS
4. ATT and NTT DoCoMo
5. Sun and IBM start their WAP Plans
6. UMTS, GPRS: Nice technology, but what about privacy ?
7. GPRS: First Game developed
8. WAP-Compendium Update
9. HDML
10. UMTS in Switzerland
11. i-Mode
12. J-Phone, Vivendi and Vodafone team up against NTT DoCoMo
13. UMTS in Poland
14. WAP and i-Mode-compatible
15. Cell Phone with Java-Technology
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1. Lithuania's WAP-Beginnings
Although the economic state of Lithuania has clearly seen better days, there are first signs of WAP. In the wealthy capital Riga, there have been first noticeable sales of WAP-mobiles. As of today, there are only about 5000 WAP-phones. Other small countries with better economic prosperity have had equally slow starts. The 2 telecomgiants LMT and Baltkom have high expectations to Lithuania, which has about 2.5 million citizens
2. Lucent and Clearnet in Canada
Lucent Technologies and Clearnet will start a large-scale WAP-test. Both companies try imitate the European market and will try out similar services. While Lucent will handle the hardware, Clearnet will take care of the rest. The companies hope that their partnership may help them to become a force in the Canadian, and possibly also the American market.
(www.lucent.com , www.clearnet.com )
3. Games for Sprint PCS
Sprint PCS have made agreements with nGame to partner in the WAP-entertainment field. At first Sprint PCS will offer their customers 3 games in the main menus.
Sprint is one of the true pioneers in wireless gaming for the American continent. Experts predict the WAP-game market to be in the 100 million Dollar-range within the next 5 years.
(www.sprintpcs.com )
4. ATT and NTT DoCoMo
The Japanese company NTT DoCoMo is very likely to buy up to 20 % of AT&T America. With this move, there could be a very high possibility that I-Mode will be introduced to the American market very soon. At the moment it is still unclear what the next move of NTT DoCoMo will be, but there is also another partnership with AOL (about which the ccWAP.com Newsletter Team wrote in an earlier edition). Both of these actions could lead to a complete domination of i-Mode in the American market. (www.nttdocomo.com )
5. Sun and IBM start their WAP Plans
Sun Microsystems Inc. and IBM Corporation have announced first interests in WAP and the wireless web. Although these announcements were almost at the same time, there is no partnership between the 2 as of now.
Sun and IBM are both quite late with starting any attempt to capture a good share of the wireless software/hardware market, but since the companies have such tremendously powerful presences in the computer world, it will not be hard for them to establish a strong position. Sun has already planned to invest over 100 million Dollars and buy a few small companies with WAP-expertise.
(www.sun.com , www.ibm.com )
6. UMTS, GPRS: Nice technology, but what about privacy ?
Despite the huge advantages of GPRS and UMTS for private persons and our entire civilization, the first WAP-experts are starting to raise their voices against the coming technology revolution. The experts say that there is a great chance that many UMTS-devices will also have integrated location systems (such as GPS), which will make it possible to track the devices with a accuracy of less than 40 yards. If such information could be accessed by third parties, the experts fear an intrusion of privacy much similar to the world-wide TV hit " Big Brother": Anyone could know where you are at anytime.
7. GPRS: First Game developed
The Swedish company Picofun, is already releasing a WAP-game which is optimized for GPRS. The game "Fight Arena" is a fight game in which one can choose from many colorful characters. "Fight Arena" has been especially programmed for GPRS-phones and will only have a great perfomance on such a device. Picofun is a Swedish company with other branches in England. (www.picofun.com )
8. WAP-Compendium Update: i-Mode and HDML
The new WAP-Compendium by ccWAP.com have a newly updated section about HDML, which is the most popular programming language in the US. In addition to this, there is another section with all the information one needs about the Japanese phenomenon i-Mode. The new section includes an introduction as well as a crash-course on how to make i-Mode pages.
(www.ccwap.com )
9. HDML
In the USA is HDML still the dominating programming language for wireless web devices of any kind. The precedessor of WML has been developed by Phone.com and there are big indicators that HDML does not have a good future. However, because the Nokia 7110 is being introduced in these days, ccWAP.com has written a detailed section on HDML.
(www.ccwap.com )
10. UMTS in Switzerland
Several big organizations have doubts about the UMTS-auction in Switzerland. The auction, was supposed to start this week (Nov. 13), could be corrupted with secret contracts between the big telecommunications companies, say critics. The Swiss UMTS-auction is very likely to give the government a much lower profit -unlike the auction in Germany, which made some 100 billion Deutschmark- because there are certain regulations to how high the companies can bid. Now, the auction was put on hold, because 2 of the big telecommunications companies (Sunrise and Diax) announced plans to merge.
(www.sunrise.ch , www.diax.ch )
11. i-Mode
The extremely popular technology from Japan is starting expansion to Europe and the USA. For this reason, ccWAP.com is now offering a very thourough look at i-Mode and NTT DoCoMo with information about the Japanse mobile market and all details for high tech interested people.
(www.ccwap.com )
12. J-Phone, Vivendi and Vodafone team up against NTT DoCoMo
The Japanese press is speculating about a partnership between the French group Vivendi, Vodaphone from England and Japan Telecom. J-Phone, which is owned by Japan Telecom, is the second most popular mobile internet service in Japan besides NTT DoCoMo's i-Mode. Although J-Phone's technology is not based on WAP, the 2 European companies want to start a WAP-network and provide the content.
(www.vodaphone.com , www.vivendi.fr )
13. UMTS in Poland
Warsaw, Poland: At the end of the deadline for UMTS licence-requests there have been a mere 3 interested organizations for 5 licences. The Polish government stated that it "might have been too early for the auction" since Poland is a little behind the west of Europe in matters of cell phone technology. Today, there are about 5.7 million people (out of approx. 39 million) with a cell phone in Poland.
14. WAP and i-Mode-compatible
Since the big deal that AT&T has made with NTT DoCoMo, Experts are predicting high chances of success for software and hardware companies which first create technologies and ways in which a cell phone can handle WAP and i-Mode at the same time. AT&T will help with the start of I-Mode in the USA, which will create a "double-standard" with WAP. Now, the first companies are starting to release "universally-applicable" wireless web software.
15. Cell Phone with Java-Technology
J-Phone is one of NTT DoCoMo's main competitors in the Japanese wireless communication market. The company is developing a new kind of cell phone with Java-technology, which could revolutionize the mobile hardware market. With Java, there could be very few limits to what a mobile phone can do.
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