Future Wireless Directions

The evolution of mobile phones and especially of the online services available to wireless devices was probably not as fast as expected during the last several years.

The main reason is that it usually takes more time to prepare people's mentality to accept something new than to create new devices with powerful features.

However, it now seems that people are starting to accept the possibility of performing online transactions using the cell phone. That is why e-commerce service providers started their fight for mobile customers. There are certain implications of using mobile services for conducting complex commercial transactions, such as high operational costs, lack of trust, and so on, but m-commerce has already become a part of people's everyday life in Japan and Europe.

It is certain that one of the most common applications of the WML will be m-commerce.

WML and M-commerce

At the moment, all the technologies required to facilitate m-commerce services are available to most phones.

The WML is a powerful, yet simple, markup language that allows building pages for mobile phones with small screens and limited resources.

There are security protocols, such as WTLS, that can facilitate secure transactions.

However, there are some disadvantages or limitations of WML.

Limitations of WML

The main limitation of WML is the environment in which it is used. Most of the phones not only have very little memory and slow simple processors, but they also have small screens and tiny keypads. WML developers should always keep the average WAP customer in mind.

You will never be able to create a successful WAP service if your WML pages are overloaded with fancy images and lots of text information.

The number of screens to go through and the amount of information requested from the customer should also be minimized so that the customer does not spend 10 minutes trying to order a pizza.

If you follow these simple rules, you will get happy customers and successful service, and you will always say that WML is powerful and easy to use.