Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Nokia Corp. (NOK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric L who wrote (2038)	2/25/2002 5:53:18 PM
From: Eric L	Respond to of 9255

re: MSFT v. NOK v. M-Services Initiative >> Global Spat Brews At 3GSM Brad Smith Cannes, France February 25, 2002 GSM Carriers At Odds With Software And Handset Giants Microsoft and Nokia drew battle lines on the Cote d'Azur last week over the future of handset operating systems–a war that GSM carriers hope neither giant will win. Both companies are offering up new wireless device platforms, and concern that a victory by one of them would lead to a closed system has members of the GSM Association working on their own standardized mobile services solution. Microsoft came to the 3GSM World Congress here last week to announce plans to incorporate its software into smartphones and wireless PDAs. The software company and Intel Corp. announced an alliance to develop reference designs for the handsets based on the Windows Pocket PC and Smartphone 2002 software and Intel's Personal Internet Client Architecture. Ben Waldman, vice president of Microsoft's mobility division, told Wireless Week the company wants to start a handset revolution by making it possible for new manufacturers–the 'original device manufacturers'–to enter the business much as they have the laptop computer manufacturing industry. Analysts view this as a slap at Nokia, which has a 40 percent market share in the wireless phone arena and last fall started its own initiative to promote a competing operating system from Symbian. Nokia says it aims to base future handset systems on open standards, although Symbian is a joint venture created by Nokia and others. Leaders of the GSM Association, a consortium of 600-plus GSM operators and vendors, worry that dominance by either side will lead to a closed solution. That concern is one reason the GSMA is pushing its M-Services Initiative, a carrier-led effort to standardize a mobile services platform, says Scott Fox, association chairman. The association last week announced the second phase of its mobile services platform, which will provide so-called WAP 'push' services this year with applications such as multimedia messaging. The first phase, announced last June, delivered 'pull' content from the Internet, while phase two will allow subscribers to do such things as send electronic postcards to friends. GSMA CEO Rob Conway says GSM carriers have become observers of the standards process and now want to make their voices heard. The GSM community used to be more unified, he says, but 'we probably lost our way' because operators needed to compete and grow their networks. Mauro Sentinelli, managing director of Telecom Italia Mobile, says one of the early reasons for WAP's failure was that too many options were left in the hands of service providers. There were as many as 165 different kinds of WAP implementations, he says, which now have been boiled down to one under the M-Services umbrella. There were 16 handsets commercially available at the beginning of 2002 that support M-Services. Telia Italia sold 1.2 million of the handsets during a Christmas campaign, mostly because users could load personal photos as screen savers. Neither Nokia nor Microsoft is a member of the M-Services Initiative, although the GSMA said it would welcome them if they agree to follow true open standards. But some carriers at the show said Nokia has no impetus to join because it has such a large market share, while Microsoft is hoping to glean licensing revenue amounting to as much as one-third of a carrier's profit per user. Microsoft's Waldman says his company and Nokia have different philosophies regarding the future of wireless data. Microsoft believes there is one Internet that should be accessible from any device, while Nokia sees the wireless Internet as something separate, he says. He says multimedia messaging already is available on the wired Internet and Microsoft simply wants to extend that experience wirelessly. On the other hand, 'Nokia would love to be the only one to have an operating system on their device,' he says. David Wood, executive vice president of Symbian, says his company's operating system is more open than Microsoft's because it has support built in for Java, Bluetooth, SyncML and XML. Nokia's open mobile architecture initiative, which involves several dozen companies, is an effort to take control away from any single company, Wood says. Microsoft is welcome to join, he adds, if it will agree to the open nature of the effort. 'Sometimes they embrace, extend and then extinguish,' he says of Microsoft. With smartphones and voice-enabled wireless PDAs just beginning to emerge, this looks like the very beginning of a battle that will continue for several years to come. << - Eric -