Nokia, TIBCO make joint push into mobile commerce
(From Yahoo! Finance UK & Ireland)
LONDON, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Finnish mobile phone company Nokia and U.S.-based TIBCO Software Inc. on Thursday announced a strategic alliance to seize opportunities in the rapidly growing area of mobile commerce.
TIBCO, which supplies the infrastructure software needed to power big e-commerce businesses, said it would use Nokia's wireless Internet technology to deploy state-of-the-art mobile solutions for major companies.
Under the partnership, TIBCO will offer a new product, TIBCO MobileConnect, which will enable a big corporate customer to communicate seamlessly with business partners and customers via wireless devices and enable mobile commerce transactions.
TIBCO and Nokia said in a joint statement that the new product would be based on Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and would also provide a pathway to the next generation of mobile technology, 3G.
"The future of mobile computing is moving to 3G networks, where people will be able to access a broad range of digital information -- including music, photos, video and television -- while on the move," TIBCO Chief Executive and Chairman Vivek Ranadive said in the statement.
"The TIBCO MobileConnect solution enables mobile providers to support WAP devices today, and rapidly move to 3G networks to provide new mobile multimedia services and applications."
TIBCO's vice president for networking and telecommunications solutions, Tugrul Firatli, told Reuters the partnership with Nokia had potential for expansion but said there were no discussions about Nokia taking a stake in TIBCO.
TIBCO already counts one of its major partners, Cisco Systems Inc , as a shareholder.
"We are looking at it as a strategic partnership with potential expansion in the very near future," Firatli said.
Nokia's vice-president for strategic software, Gerhard Romen, said the alliance could be extended to include joint efforts to develop other possible new "m-commerce" products.
"We will not exclude the possibility that we will be looking at R&D (research and development) going forward," he told Reuters. "It's just the starting point," he added.
TIBCO is majority-owned by Reuters Group Plc (LSE: RTR.L - news) , the UK-based news and information company. |
