Welcome, America!
by Tom Dibble
Welcome to the inaugural issue of what in our humble opinion will become
North America's compulsory reading on what wireless is all about and what
it's becoming before you guys and gals overtake us! Through the technological
ages, the U.S. has always held the whip hand over Europe. That has now
changed in one industry: wireless. For the first time in a while, Europeans
have a massive head start on a number of different fronts. These range from
carrier network technology standardization and WAP handset penetration to
cultural acceptance. But it's not been an easy ride. Europe has been
struggling for months now in a battle to win the consumer over to buying new
WAP handsets and making them confident that WAP is actually worthwhile. Which
i... (more)
WAP was first launched commercially in the UK during late 1999, by Orange.
Since then, all the other UK MNOs have followed suit with their support, and
despite the widespread panning WAP has taken in the press, there are now in
the realm of 1-million WAP subscribers in the UK - not too bad for a consumer
technology less than two years old.
Nevertheless, a consistent criticism of WAP is th... (more)
The mobile gaming industry is relatively embryonic. It's at an early stage of
evolution where fundamental strategies for success are coarsely defined. Its
clear dissimilarity from other rising markets is that it's a marriage of two
extremely successful industries. Established digital games companies are
increasingly recognizing the potential of mobile, and are making efforts to
muscle in... (more)
Java's back: after spending seven years wandering around the wilderness of
Web browsers (where it gave us applets) and servers (where it's had a little
more success, with servlets and JavaServer Pages entrenched as a serious
platform for dynamic content), it's returned to its roots as a language for
programming consumer electronic devices.
J2ME, Java 2 Micro Edition, is a cut-down version... (more)
Tom Hume is cofounder and director of Future Platforms, a UK company 
Keith Bergelt
Gaurav Mantri
Aditya Banerjee
John Karamitsos
Kaj van de Loo
Bob Little
Alois Reitbauer
Chris Schin
Richard Gordon
Anil Parambath
