Wap? I'd rather have my mobile internet device

If last week's PC Expo in New York has it right,
Europe has it wrong, writes STEVE HOMER.

The west coast of America is seen as the powerhouse of the internet. But in a very real way, New York is the proving ground: if you can make it here you can make it anywhere.

In sweltering downtown Manhattan, despatch riders compete for pavement space to deliver goods to your door from UrbanFetch.com and Cozmo.com. The TV and subway are saturated with ads for all manner of internet ventures and New York's "Silicon Alley" is an internet hot-house.

Last week, the temperature rose still higher in New York as the country's second-largest computer show opened its doors to 80,000 visitors. And the bad news is that PC Expo, now in its 18th year, should terrify many European companies.

In fact, the PC was almost missing from the show.

Despite the legal problems that are plaguing MP3 sites such as Napster, new devices for playing MP3 music files were a hot item at PC Expo, with Diamond unveiling its sleek new player, the Rio 600.

But the real star of the show was mobile internet, a sector that Europe keeps telling itself it is a leader in.

And what is more, the mobile applications available make all the European talk about the Wireless Application Protocol (Wap) revolution leading the world look like so much rubbish.

The IBM stand was dominated by a notice that said: "Soon one billion mobile internet devices will be pointed your way."

Where Europe might have got things wrong is that these mobile devices really do not look like being phones with browsers built in, but hand-held devices (also known as personal digital assistants) beefed up with internet connections.

The talk of the show was Palm. The company had a stand packed with weird and wonderful devices from third-party developers. These ranged from hardware gizmos such as a Kodak clip-on camera to wonderful software such as free city guides from Vindigo.

But Palm is not having everything its own way. It is challenged on two fronts from Handspring and from a Microsoft-backed effort.

Handspring was set up in 1998 by Palm's two creators. The company has had real success with its Visor, a Palm lookalike which uses the Palm operating system. Handspring has incorporated some extra technology tweaks in its basic $149 model and has undercut the Palm price of $249. Palm is not too worried, however. It makes a good return from the licence fee for the operating system on each Visor sold.

In the US, all these devices are now seen as on-the-move connectivity devices.

Microsoft and Handspring rely on plug-in modules that connect in a variety of ways. Palm though, has really cornered the market, with add-on devices for the Palm III and V and the killer connectivity device, the Palm VII. This ugly but hugely popular device connects to e-mail and internet-type services using a US radio data system.

So far these products have made little impact in the UK, but that may be set to change. Palm announced at the show that it will introduce a software upgrade for the Palm III and V so that they can use their infra-red capability to communicate with GSM phones.

The software will be available in the northern autumn and it's slated to cost $50, although Palm is considering offering it for free. This will allow Palm to deploy its huge range of third-party mobile software.

At the show, the vision of a separate phone and hand-held data communications device as the way forward seems almost unassailable, at least for the next year or two. In case it isn't, all the manufacturers are preparing to launch add-ons that will turn their devices into telephones.

If that was not worrying enough, the Palm Internet Connection Kit will incorporate a Wap browser.

After browsing the New York PC Expo, if I were a European mobile phone manufacturer relying on making a killing in the Wap market, I would be very nervous indeed.