wap

The BBC has recently reported that of those who from outside the UK who use WAP to access it's news website, 61% come from Nigeria. Next comes South Africa (19%), Jamaica (7%) and Uganda (7%). "Wap is the one platform where African countries continue to appear in the top five in our statistics," said BBC developer Gareth Owen. It puts this down to the fact that Africa is the world's largest-growing mobile phone market with unreliable landlines encouraging the growth, although mobile phone providers in many African countries have only recently begun rolling out Wap-enabled handsets. According to the BBC's statistics, page views for Wap usage are growing at 100% year on year, with UK users accounting for 65% of traffic and international usage for 35%. The BBC website alone accounts for 20% of UK Wap use.

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According to the BBC this week, Africa (and in particular Nigeria) is dominating international mobile phone access to its website. In July the West African giant was responsible for a whopping 61% of international users. A further 19% were from South Africa.

Interestingly the large take up of BBC news via mobiles in Nigeria contrasts starkly with the relatively small number of users accessing the internet via PCs - hampered by slow and unreliable landlines.

Mobile content provision via WAP has huge potential and benefit, and was the foundation of my recent application to the Reuters Digital Vision Programme at Stanford. As more and more WAP-enabled handsets circumvent the globe, SMS may finally find itself with a serious challenger..!

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