Rossman, a former Apple Computer executive who also headed the failed pen-based company Eo, owns 3.5 million Phone.com shares.

FORBES: WAP music

Alain Rossman was desperate after three years of pushing his design for a way to meld the web and wireless technology.

FORBES: WAP music

Rossman retreated to a hallway and spent a fraught half-hour pacing.

FORBES: WAP music

Before I write this article, let me thank our senior portfolio analyst Eric Rossman, who simply smiled when I handed him a doozey of a research question.

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But instead of holding a monopoly over his design and licensing it to phone makers, Rossman now faces dozens of rivals as he builds a new business selling server software and applications under the WAP standard.

FORBES: WAP music

Earlier standards wars mean Europe has phones that work on a system called GSM, while U.S. phones run on GSM, plus TDMA and CDMA. Before the new standard, wireless data had still other incompatible designs and only 700, 000 users in the U.S. "Diplomacy is harder than technology, " says Rossman.

FORBES: WAP music