WAP Vs i-Mode: The Big Fight

In the March 2000 issue of V&D, we had carried a story on

i-Mode phones, a service provided by NTT DoCoMo of Japan, which enables wireless

Internet access, and is the latest craze in Japan. i-Mode, which has emerged as

a strong contender for WAP, has 10 million subscribers in Japan alone as

compared to 3 million WAP phone subscribers. Following its mega success in

Japan, DoCoMo now wants a share in the US and European markets where WAP reigns.

In India, however, even before the WAP craze could catch up, WAP-enabled phones

have been drawing a lot of flak. There are already talks of WAP dying out. How

far are all these statements justified?

One reason why people feel WAP phones are a big let down is

that they expect their Internet experience on the WAP phone to be similar (if

not better) to that on a PC.

But, hype aside, WAP supporters feel that from the point of

view of the requirements of people on the move, who would like to access their

mail, get stock quotes, weather reports, traffic information or conduct banking

transactions, WAP should be able to deliver the goods.

Then again, these requirements are based on the segment of

society that the service is expecting to cater to. Considering the present cost

of WAP-enabled phones and airtime, it seems to be slotted for the premium

community, ideally business people, managers, CEOs and the like. Hence, these

services may be sufficient for the present but as the costs are lowered and more

people from all sections of society are able to afford them, these facilities

may just not be enough. In the present scenario where CEOs to teenyboppers carry

cell phones, the requirements of both these sections may be different and any

technology that caters to only one section of the society may just be shooting

itself in the leg. Also it is expected that within the next 1 or 2 years

handheld of various display sizes will hit the market. So, with bigger display

sizes the requirements of users could change.

The Differences

The basic difference between WAP and i-Mode is in the level

of graphics supported. And this is where i-Mode scores over WAP. Although WAP

supports some amount of graphics, it is nowhere near the capabilities of i-Mode

and proof of this is in the latest tie-up between NTT DoCoMo and SEGA to provide

online gaming through i-Mode phones. The main reason for this is the kind of

network the two use–WAP uses circuit-switched network while i-Mode uses

packet-switched data network, which is more suited to transferring data than

circuit-switched networks. Also, the packet-based network contributes to the

"always on" nature of the i-Mode service where the user is always

logged on to the Internet. This is another aspect which goes in favor of i-Mode

because the user only pays for the data that he retrieves and not for the time

that he/she is on the Net.

But, then again as much as this goes in favor of i-Mode, this

could also be the hindrance in expanding i-Mode services to other parts of the

world.

Japan uses the PDC-P network, which is really not a world

standard. Other parts of the world like Asia and



Europe have circuit-switched networks in place. This means, even if i-Mode were
to expand its services it would



still have to depend on the existing network in that country and the major
drawback of circuit-switched networks would still remain.

Another difference is in the markup languages that the two

use–i-Mode uses c-HTML which is a subset of HTML while WAP uses WML which is a

subset of XML. Although c-HTML is similar to HTML and easier for Web designers

to use, XML is considered to be the Internet language of the future as HTML has

limited capabilities. Similarly HTML will slowly convert itself to XML based

standard. Also, WAP has quite a lot of industry backing with bigwigs like

Motorola, Nokia, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Ericsson, etc. backing the technology.

Another school of thought is that in future the two could

join to work out a new standard that would be compatible. A step in this

direction could be the fact that NTT has become a very senior member of the WAP

forum. The next version of WAP could be a combination of the two. So, a new

standard might emerge where the two will be compatible and this augurs good for

technology as well as mobile users.

Krithi Aiyappa, CIOL