Winwap celebrates with free WAP emulator

Rating: works very well for a free offering

It’s not always easy to be certain that a site created for mobile browsers has been constructed properly. One solution is WinWAP for Window and the good news is that – to celebrate 10 years in existence, the latest version (4.2) is now available for free.

WinWAP from Winwap Technologies is fully compatible with the Open Mobile Alliance’s specifications for WAP. Thus the browser supports both the WAP 1.2 and 2.0 standards.

It also offers some regular web features as well to make the occasional redirection to an HTML based web site more convenient. There’s also a Winwap Smartphone browser emulator which shows what a typical smartphone browser would display on the PC’s screen.

So if a useful product like WinWAP for Windows is free, how does the company make money? Simples. It offers a version of the browser which handles both web and WAP but only directly to device manufacturers for a licence fee.

In addition to the browser, the company also offers both MMS and email products that can be custom configured for device manufacturers.

The core technology is available as a Software Development Kit (SDK) that provides the functionality for easy embedding into any existing solution. Even better, any of these SDKs can be evaluated for free if you contact the company here.

There are, in fact, four seperate SDKs: - Browser SDK ; WAP Stack SDK; MMS Stack SDK; and SMS Client SDK.

There’s another way you could discover just how good Winwap’s technology is. That’s to buy the companies Winwap browser for Windows Mobile. This comes in two versions (touch or non-touch) and cost a mere £14.85.

GoMo News downloaded the free WinWAP for Windows application from here. It was tested on an existing WAP site created years ago and works really well.

In fact, by default the program points itself at Winwap’s own wap portal – http://portal.winwap.com/. This site provides a very useful demonstration of how decently designed WAP sites actually work.

The Winwap portals breaks down into six sections: - News (including BBC); Entertainment; Chat (Winwap’s own); Search (Google); MSN; and Yahoo!.

It nice to see that a company which specialises in WAP technology is still going after ten years.

Tony is based in Surrey and is a veteran comms journalist. Tony also writes on the UK market…. contact him here tony@mobileinsight.co.uk