This is an article that I wrote for my New Technology class some years ago. The idea was to explore technologies that go up the Hype Curve and then fail. It’s a nice study of how technology can promise so much and deliver so little.
WAP is a technology that took the world by a storm around 2000. It was destined to be a revolution in the way people used their mobile phones. The Internet in you hands! However, despite the hype and glory, the technology did not live up to expectation and failed. At the same time another comparable technology emerged in Japan and, unlike WAP, became a success.
Today, nobody talks about WAP. Nevertheless, WAP makes a nice case study of how technology can fail in the market place. Some might argue that WAP did not fail and that it still exists today and is widely used. It has huge impact, and has become transparent as most technologies eventually will be. This document is a case study on WAP.