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Revolutionary deal to bridge mobile phones and personal computers

Posted on: Tuesday, 21 October 2003, 06:00 CDT

revolutionary deal to bridge mobile phones and personal computers with a new set of internet standards has been signed by Microsoft and Vodafone.

The companies hope their combined muscle will lead to a new generation of mobile services, but the industry is sceptical.

Vodafone's strategic director, Ian Maxwell joined Microsoft chairman Bill Gates on stage at the ITU Telecom 2003 show in Geneva, the telecoms industry's main event, to show how the new standards could be used.

They demonstrated a rescue service using Microsoft mapping software and Vodafone location detection that would help a driver who has broken down.

Maxwell also displayed a Vodafone connection allowing users to insert a mobile SIM card into their laptop to link it to their mobile network. The connection is known as a "dongle".

In another example, the companies showed how an internet games company could link its servers to a mobile operator's billing system enabling it to accept small payments when a game is played.

This would mean the games company would not need to develop its own micro-billing. Vodafone would take a small percentage.

Microsoft and Vodafone will give more details about the internet standards at a software developer conference later this month in Los Angeles, with applications making use of mobile services due to appear next year.

The initiative is seen by many in the industry as a shot in the dark. Adoption of new specifications would require support from more than two companies before becoming an industry standard.

Observers in Geneva last week commented that big software players, such as IBM, as well as other mobile operators, such as Orange and T-Mobile, were not included in the Microsoft and Vodafone partnership.

The initiative also conflicts with a number of existing projects, such as the Open Mobile Alliance, currently attempting to develop industry-wide mobile software standards; and the Liberty Alliance Project, which has been working with the European Commission over the past two years to develop a secure identification standard for people using mobiles to access the internet.

Despite Gates's relaxed performance in Geneva, the move is being regarded as evidence of the computing giant's overriding need to extend the market for its aging software into markets outside the personal computing. It shows a big shift of power in the communications industry.

IT giants like Microsoft have long regarded themselves as superior to mobile companies like Nokia.

Though America lagged behind Europe and Asia in mobile adoption for several years, it now knows the world market for mobiles is many times greater than that for personal computers. Microsoft has now moved into the mobile market.

The enthusiastic appearances of leading American IT bosses, such as HP chief executive Carly Fiorina, show Gates is not alone.

But Microsoft has had difficulty breaking into the mobile market, despite the support of Orange and Vodafone.

The European operating system, Symbian, is outselling Microsoft's Smartphone operating system many times over and software developers say Symbian is easier to use than Smartphone, a scaled-down version of Microsoft's old-fashioned Windows operating system.

Even the cynics at Geneva were reluctant to dismiss the new standards initiative. Microsoft is still the world's biggest software corporation and Vodafone its largest mobile telecoms operator.

Microsoft has already managed to port its basic desktop applications onto a limited number of high-end mobile phones. But Gates hopes that the initiative announced in Geneva will extend this process much further, making Micrsoft software the de facto standard for the whole mobile telecoms industry.

The internet technology used in the proposed standards is the same as that which is being added to the next generation of Microsoft Office, due out later this month.

The adoption of the new standard would effectively extend Gates' domination of the software empire into the mobile phone market.

TONY GLOVER

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