Nokia predicts entry of 'the age of content over wireless'
Thursday, June 7, 2001
DANYLL WILLS in San Francisco
Just before the president of Nokia, Pekka Ala-Pietila, gave the guest keynote speech on the second day of Sun Microsystems' JavaOne conference, Java's inventor, James Gosling, vice-president at Sun and director of Sun Labs, brought on stage several bags of mobile devices from all over the world.
Most would not work in the United States because they have their own mobile-phone system. Looking at these gadgets that work only abroad, Mr Gosling said: "Living here in North America is like living in the Third World."
Mr Ala-Pietila then gave a view of how the rest of the world was going to look. He began by repeating something Nokia had said earlier. "In 1992, we predicted that voice would go over wireless."
He said Nokia predicted there would be about 50 million handsets by 2000 and it was laughed at. The figure reached in that year was 400 million.
That was the age of voice over wireless, Mr Ala-Pietila said. Now we were entering the age of content over wireless.
"There will be one billion handhelds connected to the Internet by the first half of 2002," he said. "By the end of 2002, there will be more handsets than PCs."
One result was that the consumer would become less concerned with how things worked. "We will become less dependent on access method," he said.
Although Mr Ala-Pietila said nothing overtly targeted at Microsoft, it was clear that Sun was happy with his views. As Microsoft continues to tout the PC as the answer to everything, Sun and its partners such as Nokia feel it is important to get away from the tweaking, fiddling and general painfulness of the PC. Sun has on many occasions used the telephone as an example of how things ought to work. We simply turn it on and use it. We never ask what operating system it is using.
Mr Ala-Pietila said the audio-centric wireless world was moving to a visual one. "We are moving from the paradigm of ears to the paradigm of eyes," he said. This was happening not as a revolution but as an evolution of the technology.
This major change does mean some rethinking will have to be done. "Who is a competitor?" he asked. "Who is a partner?" Because of the necessity of having standards, everyone had to work together, even when they were in competition with each other.
As one would expect, Mr Ala-Pietila came out in full support of Java. "We believe Java is the lingua franca of mobile development," he said. "Java has a great future if it continues to provide a standard platform; if developers can enjoy economies of scale; and if intellectual property rights can be observed."
One of the great features of Java is that much of the technology can be put into a phone or mobile device. This frees up the bandwidth and airwaves so that actions can be executed quickly. Another advantage is that Java is separate from the delivery protocol. It does not matter if the device is using 2.5G or 3G. This makes it a wonderful platform for developers to use.
Mr Ala-Pietila said Nokia had high ambitions for Java on mobile devices. "We will have Java everywhere," he said. "In 2002, we will deliver over 50 million Java-enabled phones; in 2003, over 100 million."
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