Does smartphone's face browser-war and IP-language war like like PC's Netscape/explorer???
Story builds up all the time
Wednesday December 8 10:23 AM ET
Ericsson-Microsoft: A Setback for Symbian??
By Roland Moller
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Swedish mobile phone maker Ericsson's (LMEb.ST) partnership with Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) in mobile Internet devices is seen as a setback for the Symbian venture although Ericsson pledged allegiance to it.
Ericsson is one of the founding members of Symbian, which was set up along with Psion (PON.L), Nokia (NOK1V.HE) and Matsushita (6781.T) in part to keep Microsoft from repeating its dominance in personal computers in intelligent mobile phones.
Symbian, whose biggest owner Psion (PON.L) plunged on the news of Ericsson's new wireless friend, is developing products around Psion's operating system EPOC to battle Microsoft's Windows CE.
''My first reaction is that this is a major blow to Symbian,'' one mobile telecom industry source told Reuters. ''The second thought is that Ericsson is fragmented internally in two camps, the Microsoft camp and the other.''
Ericsson said it would provide its Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) stack -- used in WAP servers -- to Microsoft (MSFT.O) and adopt Microsoft's first Mobile Explorer for feature phones, but still remain committed to Symbian and EPOC.
However, Microsoft said a Mobile Explorer version for smart phones demonstrated at the Telecom 99 fair in October would run on a version of Windows CE optimized for mobile phones, raising doubts about Ericsson's future link to Symbian.
''I would see this (the alliance) as a sign of Microsoft becoming a strong player in operating systems for mobile phones,'' said Ilkka Rauvola, analyst at Paribas in London.
However, the operating system in future mobile terminals may not be as crucial and valuable an element as in personal computers.
Browser Becoming Important Than Operating System
Since mobile phones have simpler user interfaces than personal computers, the role of the operating system that steers them could be smaller than in PCs.
The role of the browser on the other hand is expected to be bigger as wireless non-voice services -- seen at the core of future phone's functions -- will run on microbrowsers.
And the Ericsson-Microsoft alliance was seen creating a stronger microbrowser player than if the two stayed apart.
''A browser war is going on now,'' the industry source said. ''That is what Microsoft's announcement signals.''
Microsoft said its Mobile Explorer for feature phones would be operating-system independent, air-link agnostic and browser-based, showing that the company wanted to get its foot into a broad range of wireless terminals.
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