Microsoft makes Windows Mobile pitch
Again. Plus added Messenger news
By Keith Dyer at 3GSM, Barcelona.
Microsoft's determination to present itself as an open source of operating software for wireless enterprise and smartphone devices contined at 3GSM, Barcelona. A round of device announcements, plus a media player deal with Motorola, plus news on mobile search and IM constituted the bulk of the announcements.
Briefly, the announcements were for a Pocket PC device with Fujitsu-Siemens, a Windows 5.0 based updated JAM product from i-mate called JAMin. A 3G smartphone from Asustech, a slider phone in the Gigabyte range in Taiwan, and by no means least the quadband iPAQ 6900 from HP.
Pieter Knook, senior vp mobile embedded business and communications sector, said that with over 100 operators shipping Windows Mobile products, the technology had arrived. The company was seeing double digit growth in the number of available mobile devices, he said. He also expected 100% growth in the number of Windows Mobile connected units in the installed base, which would mean about 10 million units by the end of June 2006.
Rejecting the accusation that Windows has a more natural fit with IT vendors he pointed out that Samsung and Motorola, both with Windows Mobile products, represented the number two and three traditional telephony players.
There are also efforts in conjunction with Texas Instruments to incorporate the OS onto a single chip, single core, solution, which would bear fruit in about 12 months or so, Knook responded when pressed.
On MSN messenger there was news that the technology has become Bouygue's highest seller in its i-mode portfolio. The companies are now adding Hotmail access to the service.
Microsoft has also bought a French mobile search company called MotionBridge. It is adding this 15 strong company, which has ins with O2, Orange and Sprint, to its own efforts to develop mobile search. MotionBridge's other chief asset, apart from these operator relationships, is its device aware functionality. A search from any device will not expose a service the device cannot run.
Finally, on the dread issue of whether Vodafone's decision to prefer Series 60 software platform inevitably meant more of an addressable market for Symbian, Knook said he was still confident in his relationship with Vodafone, pointing up the operator's committment to roll out Windows Mobile 5.0 push email to its business customers.
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