Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) will be replaced by Java technology as higher speed mobile services become available, but for now it remains a viable tactical choice.

That's the opinion of Nick Jones, research director at Gartner, who said as more sophisticated handsets come to market WAP will be seen as "the lowest common denominator" for service delivery.

Speaking at Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo, Jones said that despite WAP "being about as exciting as using a 3270 [an old IBM workstation] with a screen the size of a postage stamp", deployment of the technology makes sense for projects that can show a rapid return on investment.

However, problems such as limited graphics, security weaknesses (particularly at the WAP gateway) and a lack of development tools bode ill for the long-term future of the technology. The risk of fragmentation, increased by so-called browser wars between phone.com and Nokia, is another problem for the protocol, according to Jones.

"We see WAP as a 'tactical' technology that will be absorbed by 2004 as the poor bandwidth and latency deficiencies of mobile networks are resolved," he said.

Jones added that Java will be one of the technologies that sidelines WAP, because it provides superior usability needed for functions such as maps, device independence and, crucially, better gaming opportunities.

"WAP's greatest crime is that it is boring," said Jones, who added that Microsoft's Windows CE and Symbian's EPOC will also provide a way of delivering real applications to mobile devices.

WAP should still be considered where returns of investment in around six months can be shown, and will be dominant in geographies such as Europe until 2003.

Jones advised the consideration of SMS for low-end services, and that service providers should above else "concentrate on the quality of the user experience" in delivering WAP to users.