Motorola, Opera team on WAP-HTML browser

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Feb 6, 20042 mins

Cell phone browser will enable HTML content on existing WAP infrastructure

Motorola Inc. and Norway’s Opera Software ASA will jointly offer products for cellular phone browsers that utilize both HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) technologies, the companies announced Friday.

The WAP software stack from a browser developed by Motorola’s Global Software Group will be combined with Opera’s HTML browser software, according to Opera chief executive officer (CEO) Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner.

“We are combining future services with already existing services. There are a lot of services out there that have been made on WAP and we feel the combination is very important,” Stephenson von Tetzchner said. The browser will be designed to work on operators’ existing WAP infrastructure while enabling HTML content.

Opera’s full HTML browser supports standard HTML and “street HTML,” Opera’s nickname for the nonstandard HTML code used in many Web sites, as well as the XHTML (extensible HTML) standard used in mobile devices based on WAP, and the cHTML (compact HTML) standard used in I-mode technology.

Motorola, of Schaumburg, Illinois, and Opera, of Oslo, have already been working “for a number of months” on the project and will each license the resulting products to operators and other mobile companies “sometime this year,” Stephenson von Tetzchner said.

Opera’s CEO said the companies have decided not to specify any financial details of the agreement. Representatives from Motorola could not immediately be reached for comment.

Opera will provide the browser part of the product while Motorola will provide the communications stack, including the MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) client, Stephenson von Tetzchner said. As part of the agreement, Opera will also license Motorola’s WAP browser and MMS device client to customers as individual products.