It seems to me that with Wintel pushing to get in, they're going to be producing the kind of new products that take advantage of 3G, and evolve from a pure "cell phone". Lets hope they succeed.
Who's willing to bet against them?
iht.com
PARIS Hoping to repeat what they have done in the personal computer industry, Microsoft and Intel unveiled an alliance Tuesday that could extend the dominance of their "Wintel" platform to the multibillion dollar cell-phone industry, an area where the two companies have had little success so far.
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In a move that challenges the wireless industry's traditional reliance on custom-made technology, Microsoft and Intel, along with the U.S. chipmaker Texas Instruments, announced a joint strategy based on "templates" - combining Microsoft's software and Intel's chips - for use by makers of mobile gadgets and software developers. The companies hope enough vendors will adopt these templates to make them standards for the industry.
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Although latecomers to the wireless party dominated by the likes of Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola, the two companies nonetheless hope to capitalize on the success of Microsoft's Windows operating system and Intel's processors, which have become the standard for 80 percent of the PC market. The companies made their announcements Tuesday at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France, the largest European trade show for the wireless industry.
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The battle lines are being drawn. Backed by a massive $3.8 billion research and development budget, Intel has invested heavily in chips for mobile devices. The company last week introduced a new chip that will enable cell phones and handheld computers to download short video clips and music. And Nokia, the biggest cell-phone maker, Tuesday announced its own deal with Texas Instruments to offer a standard kit of semiconductor hardware and software for so-called "smart phones" - cell phones with PC-like software programs and e-mail functions.
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"It is not our intention to dominate this market," said Mike Wehrs, director of standards and technology at Microsoft's Mobility Group. "But what we see taking place is the traditional evolution from one that is full of vertically integrated players toward a more horizontal structure."
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Until now, most mobile phone companies have been vertically integrated - that is, they have controlled all the different aspects of making, selling, and delivering wireless equipment. That was fine when the cell phones themselves were the main driver of industry growth and voice and, later, text messaging were seen as the main uses for wireless devices.
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But over the last 18 months, analysts say, the mobile industry has been undergoing a strategic shift. As the market for wireless handsets has reached saturation, the focus has migrated toward software, services, content and applications - areas beyond the core expertise of most cell phone makers.
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Just this week, Motorola said it would team up with wireless operators in Europe to offer a chat capability, games and other software.
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"This brings in new vendors such as Microsoft to compete against Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola on the one hand and the mobile operators on the other," wrote Adnaan Ahmad, an analyst at Merrill Lynch Co., in a research note.
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Microsoft is also challenging Symbian, the British maker of the dominant operating system for mobile phones and other wireless devices. Symbian, which is jointly owned by Nokia and several other leading cell-phone makers, "is designed with mobility in mind," said Pekka Isosonppi, a spokesman for Nokia. "The industry has accepted it as is the standard for smart phones."
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Indeed, of the top five leading cell phone makers, so far only Samsung of South Korea has said it would use Microsoft's Windows-powered Smartphone 2002 software. The company is expected to introduce a Microsoft-based product at the end of this year.
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Wehr of Microsoft rejected the depiction of the company as a wireless also-ran. "We are not starting from such an underdog position," he said, adding that more than 6.5 million programmers write applications for Windows - compared to fewer than 100,000 developers of Symbian-enabled devices. PARIS Hoping to repeat what they have done in the personal computer industry, Microsoft and Intel unveiled an alliance Tuesday that could extend the dominance of their "Wintel" platform to the multibillion dollar cell-phone industry, an area where the two companies have had little success so far. |
