Symbian Delivers More Phone Services
By BRYAN BRUMLEY
AP Technology Writer
LONDON (AP) -- Symbian Ltd., developer of an operating system for complex mobile phones, on Monday launched a drive to encourage programmers to develop new services to stimulate business -- and keep the largely European consortium ahead of its U.S. competitors.
Colly Myers, chief executive officer of Symbian, said that his firm had an 18-month head start over its U.S.-based competitors, Palm Inc. and Microsoft Corp., but that the market overall lagged in delivering the full potential of the ``smart phones.''
``We haven't really come to grips with the services that people want,'' Myers said in an interview, adding that he envisioned a world in which customers used mobile devices to book seats on planes and board subways -- all without tickets or tokens.
Hans Snook, chief executive officer of the Orange mobile phone company, which is owned by French Telecom and has one of the largest customer bases in Europe, sought to inspire a meeting of Symbian developers with visions of devices that could wake them up in the morning, provide personalized health and fitness advice, locate and book restaurants and entertainment, and notify emergency services in case of an accident.
With sales of mobile phones -- and integrated phones and digital diaries -- forecast to boom, the market for the underlying operating systems could exceed $1 billion within four years, analysts say.
Microsoft originally sought to market a version of its Windows system for mobile phones, but the software proved too bulky, and the company shifted to a slimmed down approach, called Stinger.
Stinger will be tested ``in the first half of next year,'' said Phil Holden, director of marketing for Microsoft mobile devices. By December 2001, a version for consumers is due out on a phone manufactured by Samsung, he said in a phone interview from Redmond, Wash.
Symbian officials say their software already is available to consumers on a smart phone made by one of the five owners of Symbian, Ericsson of Sweden.
The other owners of Symbian include the major manufacturers of mobile phones -- Nokia Corp. (NYSE:NOK - news) of Finland, Chicago-based Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT - news) and Tokyo-based Matsushita -- as well as Psion, a British manufacturer of personal digital assistants, that originally started the company. |
