Microsoft launching service for pagers, cell phone
By Martin Wolk
SEATTLE, June 14 (Reuters) - Moving aggressively to stake a
claim in the wireless Internet market, Microsoft Corp <MSFT.O>.
will roll out a service Monday that pushes stock quotes, sports
reports and other information to pagers and digital phones.
Microsoft's MSN Mobile ultimately will be broadened to
other wireless devices and additional data including electronic
mail, said Yusuf Mehdi, marketing director in the software
giant's consumer and commerce group.
He said the Redmond-based company, which has spent hundreds
of millions of dollars on its online operations with only mixed
success, recently acquired tiny OmniBrowse Inc. in nearby
Bellevue, which offered a similar service, allowing MSN to beat
other major portal sites and claim bragging rights to what he
called the first "wireless Internet portal."
America Online Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. have announced similar
efforts to capitalize on the proliferation of wireless devices
and smart consumer appliances that one day could rival personal
computers as a way to plug in to the Internet.
"It's all about a vision of providing consumers the ability
to access their online information anywhere, anytime, on any
device," Mehdi said. "I believe it's a very profound change in
how people will use the Web."
While the wireless service will be extremely limited at
first, Microsoft is working to add interactivity to the system,
allowing customers to respond to messages, perform simple
transactions and surf the Web using hand-held devices.
"You will see a very, very rich proliferation of services,"
he said.
Microsoft's new service follows the company's agreement a
month ago to invest $600 million for a 4 percent stake in
wireless service provider Nextel and last year's establishment
of a joint venture with cellular telephone maker Qualcomm Inc.
Under the deals Microsoft plans to roll out wireless
Internet services to some 2 million hand-held telephones over
the next year, Mehdi said.
While many analysts see the services as appealing mostly to
a niche market of on-the-go business people, Microsoft is
working on expanding wireless capabilities to draw in a broader
audience.
For example, the company is working on a voice-activation
system to enable services that otherwise would be difficult or
impossible using the limited keypad and screen size of small
devices such as cell phones, said Rodney Vieira, a Microsoft
group product manager.
Microsoft also hopes to take advantage of a federally
mandated feature in future cell phones that will pinpoint their
location using satellites. That would make it possible, for
example, to get information automatically on nearby stores and
restaurants.
"As long as there's a pipe there from the services side, we
can pump the information to (any) device," Vieira said. "What
were waiting on is for the hardware to develop."
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