Autonomy chief attacks US approach to WAP

Mike Lynch, CEO of Autonomy, labelled the strategy of trying to map the internet onto mobile phones 'crazy'. Speaking on this week's Agenda Setters programme, Lynch said Europe is not just way ahead of the US in terms of infrastructure, but it better understands what WAP should be about about.

One of the UK's earliest technology entrepreneurs, Lynch explained that what will prove the key to WAP is not transferring the whole web onto mobile phones, but offering specific information services.

He said: "I think Europe understands that model is the way forward, whereas in the US they don't have the infrastructure and they're getting hung up on the technology.

"In the US people keep looking at sending web pages to your phone - what a crazy idea, why do you want to stand on a wet street corner and look at a web page on a phone?" he added.

Lynch explained that opening up access to information on the net requires special filtering technology to be developed.

"Autonomy is focussing on putting the intelligence on the server to make it work - you can't use the old technologies with mobile," he said and added there are a host of significant European companies in the process of putting in WAP services.

Lynch claimed the US is "stunned and confused" at the market lead Europe controls and that one of the reasons why the US is lagging is because it has free enterprise-driven phone system, whereas Europe's is standards-based

He added: "It hits at the heart about how they think things should be done."

Lynch, gained a PhD on probability from Cambridge in the late 80s and formed his first company Neurodynamics in 1991 to develop pattern recognition technology. Three years later he formed Autonomy which developed intelligent software that allowed search engines to recognise text opening up the internet to user with non-technical backgrounds.

You can watch the full Agenda Setters interview with Mike Lynch in the Tech Breakthrough Channel, or simply click on the video link above.