WAPit's scrapped it

Mobile portal dies a lonely death

By Kieren McCarthy • Get more from this author

Posted in Data Networking, 6th June 2001 15:51 GMT

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Updated Top WAP portal and app developer WAPit has filed for bankruptcy after failing to get a second round of financing.

The Finnish company was set up in 1998 and was a main force behind open source WAP, gateways and middleware. Its products will live on in other products but WAPit itself and a range of talented staff are out the window.

The company's blames a poor market (for WAP phones? Never!) and a lack of interest in money toilet-flushing. Also gone is the company's open-source gateway Kannel - which was hoping to be WAP equivalent of Apache.

Some are sad to see it go, praising the company as an innovator; others saw it as an over-hyped prodigy. One of the most suspicious ideas it had was to use "rock star" Mato Valtonen of Leningrad Cowboys as a frontman for the company.

Farewell WAPit.

Update

WAPit may be dead in the water but the PR man for competitor 3G Lab has quickly fired over a press release announcing that it, at least, has just secured another £3 million in funding from 3i. 3i has pumped money in 3G Lab since its inception.

3G Lab does a similar sort of thing as WAPit did. It calls itself "a world leading company in the development of software and applications targeted at the 2.5G and 3G marketplace".

So there is some life in the old WAP yet. ®