Who are the players in this WAP game?

"By 2004 mobile subscribers are expected to exceed 1 billion. This number represents about one sixth of world population. No wonder every one wants to cash in this huge opportunity"

The mobile data opportunity is huge and needless to say, every one has interests. On the one side are hardware and technology vendors, the companies which supply the physical infrastructure for mobile networks and have developed enabling technologies such as WAP. The names include digital mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson. Then there are software suppliers developing wireless communicator operating systems to run on the next generation of hand-held devices. These include the Symbian partnership comprising Psion, Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Matsushita and Sony with the EPOC operating system, and Microsoft Windows CE.  Application software vendors are also a very important part of the software community which have begun to offer applications software such as e-mail and web browsers. At the other end are the mobile phone network operators - Vodafone and others - which are expected to deliver content and value-added services such as news, share quotes, timetable and weather data to mobile devices with WAP.