3GSM: Microsoft links to T-Mobile, Orange in Europe

By Junko Yoshida
iApplianceWeb
(02/18/03, 01:25:25 PM EDT)

CANNES, France - In announcing affiliations with two major European mobile operators -- T-Mobile and Orange -- at 3GSM World Congress here today, Microsoft Corp. escalated its steady incursion into the international mobile phone market.

T-Mobile made public its intention to launch Microsoft's Smartphone-based handsets, manufactured by High Tech Computer Corp., across its major markets in the summer of 2003.

Separately, Orange announced plans to become the first mobile operator to distribute mobile applications through the Microsoft Mobile2Market program. Microsoft has developed a process for testing, certification and marketing of network-ready wireless applications for the Smartphone software platform - which Microsoft calls "Mobile2Market." Under this framework, the computer software giant hopes to help developers bring mobile applications to market more simply and efficiently. Further, Microsoft hopes to insure network reliability for new Smartphone applications so that it will be easy for mobile operators to catalog network-ready mobile applications, and for consumers to find and purchase them, according to Microsoft.

Juha Christensen, corporate vice president of the mobile devices marketing group at Microsoft, sought to assuage operators' fears Microsoft giantism, by noting, "We are all about putting mobile operators at the focal point."

Christensen predicted that Microsoft sees, three years from now, 39 percent of mobile phone market "will be addressed by smart phone devices."

Microsoft is hardly alone in establishing a certification program for mobile applications developed for their own mobile platform. Similarly, Nokia and Sony Ericsson, together with Symbian, are evaluating a common certification program for Symbian OS applications, said Philip Vanhoutte, corporate vice president, marketing, at Sony Ericsson. Their goal is to enable application developers to assure their application's quality, while allowing networking operators to control application installation. Meanwhile, users will be sure of the source, quality and integrity of Symbian OS applications, he added. However, exactly who would be responsible - among the three companies - for that certification program has not been determined, according to Vanhoutte.

Microsoft also unveiled at the 3GSM World Congress the first joint Microsoft and Intel Smartphone concept design. Winstron Corp., known as a high volume manufacturer of Dell computers, has become the first ODM to sign up for the reference design, said Microsoft's Christensen. Winstron plans to launch the device, based on the Microsoft/Intel concept design, later this year.

The Microsoft/Intel Smartphone design comes with Microsoft's Smartphone software, stack memory and microprocessor design based on Intel's PXA262 processor to enable a 176 x 220 pixel color screen, and an integrated camera by TransChip. The design assures up to five hours of talk time.

While Microsoft is claiming steady inroads into the Smartphone market, a battle over mobile phone operating systems is intensifying. Symbian CEO David Levin called Symbian's operating system "a platform that allows handset vendors and operators to choose and innovate their own [mobile handset] vision." With Symbian OS, for example, Levin said that one can choose two very different user interface platforms: UIQ interface, used in Sony Ericsson's smart phones, based on a large screen user interface for small pen-based phones; and Series 60 platform, deployed and licensed by Nokia to other mobile handset manufacturers, based on "an ear-to-mouth" user interface. In contrast, Microsoft's Smartphone platform offers "a very limited design," he said.

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