WAP: The Archive's Fastest Rise

If the camera took four years to go from rarity to standard (we talked about it here), WAP — the first way to browse the internet from a cell phone, on simplified pages designed for small screens and slow connections — took even less time.

In 1999, according to data from our archive, only 4% of the models released that year supported WAP. In 2000 came the leap: 49%, almost one model in two — among them the Nokia 6210, one of the most widespread business phones of the era. In 2001 WAP is already present in 84% of models: effectively the standard.

1999	4%
2000	49%
2001	84%
2002	93%

Curiously the share drops slightly in the following years — 76% in 2007 — a possible reflection of the arrival of the first full browsers on cell phones, which made WAP gradually less central. It remains, however, in our data, the technology that spread faster than any other in the archive.

Want to learn about a cell phone that, almost single-handedly, became a symbol of its era? We talk about it in Nokia 3310: why it became a legend.