NEC, Mitsubishi and Motorola have already decided to adopt this browser for their handsets, Arakawa said. Kamada argued that Internet standards that have come into widespread use should be employed even for wireless Internet access. All are common in the Internet infrastructure. Thus the browser can be used for any kind of wireless-communication environment, the company said. When a network upgrades from 2.5 to 3G, the browser can continue to be used just by changing the baseband layer.
Manufacturers can develop and port software independent of the hardware layers.
Java and other extensions can be plugged into the browser on the Wave layer. This function could be added to the browser via a plug-in interface. The browser's size is about 500 kbytes, some 10 to 20 percent larger than the browser provided for i-Mode terminals. WAP service networks now rely on gateway servers that convert protocols and content between the terminal and WAP content. When WAP subscribers increase and traffic rises, network carriers have to upgrade those gateway servers, Kamada says, which can add costs.