Soon we will be able to access the net from the new Qualcomm phones:
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Unwired Planet Pushes Forward
Inter@ctive Week
Unwired Planet Inc. was the belle of the ball at the Cellular Telecommunications
Industry Association Wireless '97 trade show this week in San Francisco, making appearances in several vendor booths and
striking a new deal with Alcatel Telecom.
Unwired Planet has client and network-based software based on its Handheld Device Markup Language, or HDML, which it
said is akin to HyperText Markup Language, or HTML, but delivers a more stripped-down version of content, which is
better suited to run over wireless networks and formatted for small screens on the wireless devices.
According to Ben Linder, vice president of marketing for Unwired Planet, the most exciting new development is the
announcement by Qualcomm Inc., which in January licensed the Unwired Planet software and made a minority equity
investment in the company, that it intends to integrate Unwired Planet's software in all of its Code Division Multiple
Access, or CDMA, wireless handsets.
The deal indicates, as Linder puts it, "that Unwired Planet is not a strange little phenomena. It will be in every Qualcomm
phone." Unwired Planet's goal from the start has been to create a browser that works over standard phones, he said.
Alcatel intends to integrate the thin Web browser software in its phones, which are based on the European-derived digital
wireless standards known as Global Standard for Mobiles, or GSM. And Unwired Planet will announce at least one other
GSM handset vendor that will use its software at the CeBIT trade show this month in Germany.
The first of these Unwired Planet-enabled phones will become available later this year.
Meanwhile, Unwired Planet is working with as-yet-undisclosed vendors and carriers to create services that would push
information on Web sites to consumers over one-way links. That could be done over paging networks or over wireless
digital networks' short messaging services. Unlike information services offered over paging networks today - which Linder
said have been "enormously unpopular" - the Unwired Planet push scenario would provide customized information through
which customers could jump around at will, rather than reading through a series of messages to find the information they
need.
The company is now working with Web site companies that provide such information as airline information, news
headlines and stock quotes. |
