WAPI refuses to die in China. You may have thought it was dead, but it’s really been bidding its time, like the Dark Lord in Mordor, waiting for the all-powerful MIIT to resurrect it for a second life as a wireless LAN protocol in handsets in China. The globally accepted Wi-Fi is still officially banned in handsets sold here, but MIIT’s decision to allow WAPI is leading some to wonder whether Wi-Fi will be next.

Earlier this month, China’s IT regulator, MIIT, called a sudden meeting to let the handset supply chain know that henceforth it would be OK to add wireless LAN capability to handsets – as long as it was WAPI, not Wi-Fi. Not surprisingly, less than a week later, Haier released a Windows Mobile-based smartphone with embedded WAPI that will run on China Telecom’s CDMA network. Other handset makers, such as China’s Coolpad and Taiwan’s HTC, are promising more phones in May and June. By late summer, I suspect China Mobile and China Unicom will have similar offerings.

MIIT’s move to finally loosen up on WLAN makes sense. Most buyers of 3G phones would be annoyed to pay a premium for a 3G phone with the WLAN feature disabled. Most wouldn’t, instead choosing one of the readily available smuggled phones or grey-market phones.

It’s unclear whether market leaders such as Nokia and Samsung will support WAPI. And that’s what counts. Buyers of 3G handsets are more likely to choose these brands, believing they have better quality. Without major brand support, WAPI will remain a niche in the market. MIIT would have been better off lifting the ban on Wi-Fi and pairing it with TD-SCDMA to give the fledgling cellular technology an edge. 

Not all is lost, however. It’s probable the Chinese market will eventually see WAPI/Wi-Fi dual-mode handsets. International Wi-Fi chip designers such as CSR are now members of the WAPI Alliance, and Chinese and Taiwanese companies already claim to have dual-mode WAPI/Wi-Fi chips and modules. For access points, a software upgrade will install WAPI capability, including the security protocols that backers originally stressed as the reasoning behind WAPI’s development.

For background on the development of WAPI, take a look at earlier stories I wrote while at the EE Times.

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