Surfing the internet on mobile phone – in 1997 the german mobile network operators started the first try to realize this vision, but already in 2000 it was anounced to have failed. The users did not know what it was for and for those who knew, it was just too expensive.

At the end of 2000 João da Silva, executive of the EU-commission for mobile communications, stated that WAP was a good technology that nobody had been waiting for. He accused the developers of WAP of having barely recognized the needs of the customers. He did not rate WAP as complete failure, but as the first hard step to a really useful mobile service.
But the next try, importing i-mode from Japan, failed as well because of lacking demand.

All the more impressive seem the prognoses that have recently been published by the eco-Verband in their study „Mobile Outlook“. 13 percent of the 72 interviewed experts set the statement that most of the consumers are going to be surfing the internet on their mobiles in 2007/2008 on the first rank.

Consultancy Dialog Consult GmbH and VATM e.V. estimate that the sales of mobile data transfer will be growing from 3.3 percent in 2005 to 6.1 percent in 2006. Optimism across the board. „After ten scanty years the mobile services are finally getting going“ Dr. Bettina Horster rejoices. Not everybody has this positive attitude – specialist author Markus Hövener warns of being too enthusiastic and refers to the expectations for WAP at the end of the 90’s that had not been fulfilled.

With the steady breakthrough of the mobile web new advertising space is appearing. In Germany the revenues of mobile online-advertising already reached nearly 530 Millions US-Dollars in 2006. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is diagnosing the branch a growth of 17 percent for 2007. This enormous growth promises the mobile web a thriving future.
Search engines are going to play a key role, but they must, as well as all other websites, adapted to the mobile medium – a process forgotten in the early years of WAP. But this neglect is quite unlikely to happen again. Every group must have learned out of the recent 10 years and, compared to the disappointed WAP-users in 1999, the ones already using the mobile web today are very content.
The course for a successful mobile marketing is set and the potentials just have to be snatched at.

In my opinion, to reach all parts of the pupulation, the mobile network operators have to cut prices to make the trying out less „risky“. Companies should continue extending their mobile website content and advertise more and more targeted in other media. If all conditions are complied – favorable prices, fast data transfer, various adapted websites – I believe in a success story of the mobile web that is going to be similar to the one of the world wide web.