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Microsoft, Qualcomm venture gunning for Symbian?
By Elinor Mills and Kristi Essick
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 1:20 PM PT, Nov 5, 1998
Microsoft and Qualcomm are preparing to announce next week the formation of a new company that will develop smart phones based on Qualcomm's Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) wireless technology, sources close to the companies confirmed.
A Qualcomm representative confirmed that the two companies would be announcing a new company at an event in Redmond, Wash., on Tuesday. She declined to elaborate and Microsoft representatives did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Microsoft's Windows CE operating system has been considered too large for use in phones and handheld devices, analysts said. But Microsoft is working on a "slimmed-down version" of Windows CE for the mobile phone market, according to an analyst who asked not to be identified.
In June, Nokia, L.M. Ericsson Telephone, and Psion announced the formation of a new company, Symbian Ltd., to develop Psion's Epoc 32 operating system and license it to manufacturers of smart phones and handheld communicators. Motorola became a Symbian shareholder last month.
"Symbian took the tack that they were trying to kill any CE threat [threat from CE] before it came along," said Jill House, an analyst at Framingham, Mass.-based International Data Corp. But "Windows CE is kind of behind, and there are questions as to whether it is small enough to go into a phone ... it eats up space and battery life."
"I think the initiative for the joint venture [between Qualcomm and Microsoft] came from Microsoft," said Decklan Lonergan, an analyst at Strategy Analytics, in London. "They [Microsoft] obviously see Symbian as a competitive threat."
Earlier this year, Qualcomm announced it was licensing 3Com's Palm Computing operating system and in September said it was testing its pdQ smart phone running the Palm OS, which offers Internet and e-mail access, as well as access to scheduling and productivity applications.
However, the Palm technology is a "transitional move" for Qualcomm, according to the anonymous analyst. Qualcomm and Microsoft's announcement may be more of a "complete solution" than just offering Windows CE on CDMA phones, the analyst said.
"I can't comment on Microsoft's intentions; I would only say that there is growing evidence that the wireless information device market is very important," said Paul Cockerton, a spokesman for Symbian, in London. However, while it remains to be seen whether Windows CE can scale down to the level of a mobile phone, "Epoc is already there."
Symbian supports Psion's Epoc 32 operating system as a standard for handheld communication devices.
Qualcomm's alliance with Microsoft could separate it even further from the other major mobile-phone vendors, many of which are either involved in Symbian or leaning toward joining it, Lonergan said. Symbian's Epoc is seen by most observers as the stronger operating system for handheld devices over Microsoft's Windows CE, he said. Though both operating systems will undoubtedly exist in some capacity, Epoc has a stronger advantage at this point.
"We find Epoc is a very reliable, proven solution and the best available for very small portable devices," said Liisa Nyyssonen, a spokeswoman for Nokia. While the idea of competition in the smart-phone market is welcome, Nokia is concerned that if two incompatible operating systems go head-to-head, the user could suffer, she said. Right now, mobile phones in Europe often don't work in the United States and vice versa, because of the existence of so many competing standards, she pointed out.
"There is a lot of motivation to try to improve the situation for next-generation products," Nyyssonen said, and that is why they have teamed with Ericsson, Psion, and Motorola to develop Epoc. Interoperability is the goal in creating the operating system that will run on these devices, she said.
But the fact that Microsoft will join up with Qualcomm doesn't mean it is committed only to one hardware vendor, or solely to the CDMA platform. Microsoft will attempt to ally itself with more than just one mobile-phone vendor, and if Ericsson, Motorola, and Nokia weren't so closely tied to Epoc at this point, Microsoft would most likely have approached them, Lonergan said. The idea is to get Windows on all kinds of handheld phone devices, whether they are based on CDMA, GSM, or another standard.
Symbian also wants to line up as many phone hardware manufacturers as possible to license its software, Symbian's Cockerton said.
"Our intention is to make Epoc as open as possible," Cockerton said. The company has no allegiance to any platform and plans to make Epoc available for whatever mobile-phone standards emerge.
However, there is little doubt that two camps are forming in the smart-phone market, with Windows supporters on one side and Epoc supporters on the other.
"In the long run, Windows CE is not designed for smart phones," said Jan Ahrenbring, vice president of mobile communications at Ericsson, when Symbian was founded earlier this year. "Windows CE is derived for computers, not for mobile phones." Ericsson plans to focus on Epoc for its phone-based handheld products but will still use Windows CE for its larger, PDA-style handhelds, he said.
Meanwhile, Symbian has gained another Microsoft opponent in its camp. Wednesday, the group signed a deal with Oracle that will see the two companies work together to enable Epoc to provide access to data residing in Oracle databases. Oracle will develop a version of Oracle Lite to run on Symbian's OS, the companies said.
Microsoft Corp., in Redmond, can be reached at (425) 882-8080 or www.microsoft.com. Qualcomm Corp., in San Diego, can be reached at (619) 587-1121 or www.qualcomm.com.
Elinor Mills is a San Francisco correspondent for the IDG News Service, an InfoWorld affiliate. Kristi Essick is a Paris correspondent for the IDG News Service, an InfoWorld affiliate.
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