Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a technical standard for accessing information over a mobile wireless network. A WAP browser is a web browser for mobile devices such as mobile phones that use the protocol. Introduced in 1999, WAP achieved some popularity in the early 2000s.
Before the introduction of WAP, mobile service providers had limited opportunities to offer interactive data services, but needed interactivity to support Internet and Web applications such as email, stock prices, news and sports headlines.
WAP sites are websites written in or converted to WML (Wireless Markup Language) and accessed via the WAP browser. WAP websites are now considered outdated as most modern phones have web browsers with HTML support.
By the 2010s, WAP had been largely superseded by more modern standards. Most modern handset internet browsers now fully support HTML, so they do not need to use WAP markup for web page compatibility, and therefore, most are no longer able to render and display pages written in WML, WAP's markup language.