CAUGHT without any mobile strategy, some dotcom companies could be wondering how they would compete in the emerging mobile commerce market. So whether it's a budding dot.com company or not, chances are they would want to take a closer look at the following figure and do something about it: There will be one billion mobile phones in the world by 2003, 50 percent of which will be Wireless Application Protocol-enabled.

Take note, this was pegged by Nokia for mobile phones alone. Not yet included are personal digital assistants and notebook computers that could become WAP-enabled, too. So if that figure's to be believed, and provided all these mobile users will be WAP-dependent, chances are dotcoms would want to take full advantage of this phenomenon.

For Hewlett-Packard and Nokia, now is the time to do exactly this. Gearing up for WAP should give them the "first-mover" advantage.

HP and Nokia have announced locally that they have collaborated to deliver what they claimed is the industry's most complete solution for wireless Internet communications based on WAP--a ready-to-run product bundle dubbed WAPserv which includes hardware, consulting, training and integration services.

HP and Nokia also stressed during that they fully support the mobile e-services economy as this was described to become the "key differentiator'' and a "competitive weapon'' for companies to make it in e-business. John Fogarasi, HP South Asia's director of e-services and marketing, enterprise and commercial business, stated that HP is an advocate of mobile e-services which integrates WAP and e-speak technologies, creating a new class of wireless Internet services. HP is also supporting the mobile e-services bazaar.

Since WAP is still on its preliminary stages in the country, HP and Nokia believe they can both help promote WAP, make it widely accepted and fuel various e-businesses. Both parties believe that the entities which will make WAP possible are companies that provide online businesses, new media businesses, terminal manufacturing, portals, system integrators, telecoms and software vendors.

"The way we promote WAP is to have more applications accessible so that the only way we can have the acceptance by the market as well as the proliferation of e-services is to have more applications. So we support the mobile e-services bazaar in Singapore and then we encourage our potential customers in the Philippines to visit our site in Helsinki, the mobile center,'' said Raymund del Val, HP Philippines' general manager.

Del Val added that three companies already signed up in the mobile e-services bazaar. He refused to divulge the names and nature of these companies.

"The reason we're supporting a mobile e-services bazaar is to have more start-up companies join the bandwagon, and to produce more access points and basically a solution to promote the use of the WAP service on the enterprise level,'' added Del Val.

In his visit to the Philippines, Alain Fastre, Director for Nokia Wireless Software Solutions, stressed how the local environment could create a market for WAP.

"Open standards create a market. Locking people in with proprietary technology does not create a market--it just creates an illusion. So what we think is going to happen is that WAP will allow people to have Internet in every pocket. Just as e-commerce will thrive on your PC, so will it be on your mobile phones,'' he said.

Asked to comment on e-commerce and how WAP could fuel the growth of e-commerce in the country, Del Val said: "It doesn't really matter if the (e-commerce) law will be passed or not. E-commerce will definitely flourish. E-commerce is dependent on the services as well as the availability and affordability of WAP devices.''

Fastre predicted that in the future there is a possibility that every family will have a WAP server at home. In Finland, he said, 70 percent of the population already have mobile phones and one out of five do not have fixed lines anymore.

Frastre said that the good thing about WAP is that consumers are not tied to just one manufacturer. He also added that from an application development point of view, access would be independent of technology.

He explained that if one entity would develop an application, it should run on multiple WAP servers and it would have to be accessible to multiple WAP phones.