Excerpts from mercurycenter.com.
Much of the global phone and paging industry is rallying around Unwired Planet's technology, which transforms ordinary mobile phones into ''smart'' ones. One major U.S. manufacturer has announced plans to include the browser in a popular flip phone, and others are expected to follow suit.
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Unwired Planet is doing its part to speed the convergence of phone and Internet: it's giving away critical pieces of its technology to customers and competitors. By trading away its monopoly, the company hopes to make the Internet a standard feature on mobile phones and boost the market for related Unwired Planet software.
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A wide array of phone and paging companies agree. On May 7, three of the top mobile-phone makers proposed a common approach to displaying the Internet on mobile phones that is based largely on Unwired Planet's technology. Thirty-three other vendors and phone companies have agreed to work together on this proposal, which is expected to become the industry standard.
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Prodded by Unwired Planet, a number of companies have developed alternate versions of their Web site for pint-size screens. These include ESPN, which offers sports scores; Mapquest, which provides digital maps and driving directions; Travelocity, which supplies travel reservations; WhoWhere?, a telephone directory service; Bloomberg, which offers financial news; and Accuweather, which reports on the weather.
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Unwired Planet was the first company providing the technology to link cellular networks to the Internet, and it remains the only supplier so far. However, the company's support for a standardized approach means that would-be competitors can develop their own browsers or servers without fear of incompatibility.
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Ira Brodsky, president of Datacomm Research Co. of Chesterfield, Mo., said that the key was getting the phone manufacturers to make Internet-related functions a standard feature of their phones. That's starting to happen now: Rossmann said that he expects about 20 phone manufacturers to include the browser in their digital phones over the next year.
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Annette Jacobs, California area president for GTE Wireless, believes the key is having a phone with a bigger screen that's easier to use. ''Once it really gets to the point where you almost have your laptop in your hand, that's when it's really doing to take off,'' she said.
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Let's all hope that the "bigger screen" is Kopin's CyberDisplay. |
