To: LindyBill who wrote (8179 ) 10/12/1999 2:32:00 PM From: JohnG Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 54805
PHCM Some Kind of Monkey?? JohnG To: gdichaz who wrote (2466) From: tero kuittinen Thursday, Oct 7 1999 9:57AM ET Reply # of 2510 Thanks, chaz - I like Phone.com a lot. It probably has a great future ahead of it once investors realize how big mobile data will be one day. But let's get real here - unlike some people have been claiming, Nokia is not licensing the UP microbrowser. The company started selling internet models in 1996, so microbrowser design has been a going concern there for half a decade now. Phone.com is good enough in itself - it doesn't have to be hyped. What's good is that Nokia, Ericsson and Phone.com have this interoperability agreement. So N and E make their own stuff - and the second tier mobile phone manufacturers license Phone.com's stuff. Interoperability is maintained, content can be designed for one specification and hopefully everybody's happy. As long as the industry doesn't fragment into non-compatible softaware versions, Phone.com should be able to mint money from the licensing agreements. I don't think many companies will succeed at making money in the smartphone biz - but the beauty of Phone.com is that everyone is trying. It's a huge corporate vanity thing from Mitsubishi to LG... so even if none of these firms manage to make any moolah from their ambitious smartphone programs, at least Phone.com should be able to cash in on the sheer volume of these initiatives. It's good to see they're paying attention to 7110. The whole WAP castle may collapse, if the interoperability issues are not addressed seriously. Apparently there are problems with making Nokia WAP models work with Siemens WAP network solutions, for example. I hope they sort this out very soon. Tero