By Ben King, 7 June 2001 15:37
NEWS The bankruptcy of mobile data company Wapit has highlighted the plight of many small mobile data companies struggling to survive the telco downturn. The delay in the commercial deployment of high-speed data services like GPRS and 3G has hit many small WAP developers hard. Trivanti, the 3G apps arm of Psion, is currently being wound down, with 15 redundancies. In a statement on Trivanti, Psion said: "The mobile data market has not developed as quickly as anticipated with delays to the implementation of GPRS and a subsequent reduction in investment in wireless content." Also, European telcos are refusing to guarantee small content providers a revenue stream by sharing call revenues with them or providing easy billing platforms. Major infrastructure players like Motorola and Nokia are stepping into the gap by providing basic high-speed data applications. Many surviving software developers have linked up with equipment vendors to stay in business and secure some kind of revenue stream. For example, Codeonline, the independent developer of games under the Trivial Pursuit brand, is now distributing its software through Motorola. Wapit developed a number of pioneering services, including the first ever open source WAP gateway. The bankruptcy follows the company's failure to secure second-round funding. Troubled new media investment bank and incubator Durlacher acted as advisor on the second round of funding, as well as being a shareholder in the company. One of Wapit's founders was Mato Valtonen, film star and former member of the Finnish punk rock group Leningrad Cowboys, famous for their enormous quiffs.
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