 | January 1, 2000 |
Seizing the cell-phone soul
STRUGGLE: OSs vie to occupy next-gen phones
It's a fight over who will put the smarts in future smart phones.
The three combatants, Symbian, Palm Computing, and Microsoft, are battling to
establish dominance over the OS and support software that will control
next-generation cell phones.
In recent action, Microsoft and Ericsson announced a licensing deal and a
yet-to-be-named joint venture to enable and promote the mobile Internet market.
Ericsson will supply Microsoft with a WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) stack
designed for Internet access on portable devices. And Ericsson will adopt
Microsoft's Mobile Explorer browser,
which works with WAP or HTML
content. But how does the agreement affect the OS fight? Ericsson hasn't
yet announced whether it will use Windows CE. Mobile Explorer doesn't
care what OS it runs on, but Microsoft has indicated that a more capable
version is available for Windows CE.
Meanwhile, Mobile Explorer could cut into high-flying Phone.com's
potential, because the WAP pioneer had the mobile phone browser market to
itself until now.
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Palm appears to be in the driver's seat. Microsoft might get left out. |
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The recent licensing agreement between Symbian and Palm Computing appears
to place Palm in the driver's seat in the cell-phone OS race. Symbian has
agreements to supply its EPOC OS to Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, and Matsushita.
And Nokia appears to be leading the movement to put the Palm interface and API
on top of EPOC and integrate portions of the Palm OS technology. Phones
equipped with the Palm/EPOC combination could run the thousands of available
Palm OS applications and take advantage of the popular pen-based Graffiti user
interface.
Microsoft and Windows CE could be left out of the cell-phone OS
picture completely, despite their relationship with Qualcomm. It's
likely, however, that some Windows CE portables will implement cellular
capability.
—by Maury Wright
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