WAP community launches online laboratory

NEWS AnyWhereYouGo.com, an independent WAP commmunity aimed at developing wireless standards, has unveiled an online laboratory to test and assess WAP applications across multiple devices and gateways. The Wireless Internet Lab provides developers and IT managers with an extensive range of testing and analysis services. AnywhereYouGo.com is also releasing a wireless application testing tool available on the site, to let developers test WAP sites online. James Pearce, UK director of AnyWhereYouGo.com, told silicon.com: "A lot of the products and gateways are being developed so quickly that they are not necessarily complying with WAP standards, and so a lot of the WAP sites people are building don't work." He claimed a high proportion of the problems are caused by programming faults. "The language that WAP applications are built with is very strict and so far, because the phone handsets have been so rare, many people are testing their sites over a simulated PC which doesn't give the same results," he added. Using the tool, AnywhereYouGo.com tested 50 WAP sites - covering a range of companies, from established global enterprises to new WAP ventures - and found that 28 per cent had errors that were serious enough to prevent users from viewing pages and completing transactions. The company is offering three levels of service - with a basic package costing around £500 and an intermediate level at £5,000 Analyst house, Strategy Analytics, forecasts that m-commerce transactions will total 14 billion in 2005, comprising a total market worth $200bn.