New "open mobile" architecture could unify wireless market: some see a closed door admission policy by Nokia - Server & PC

Computer Technology Review, Feb, 2002 by Joshua Piven

At Comdex, consortium of chip makers, mobile phone vendors, and wireless carriers announced a new initiative for a so-called "open mobile" wireless architecture. The new platform, a somewhat hazy combination of client-side and back-end software standards could, in theory, both standardize the fragmented mobile OS market and at the same time give the mobile phone industry a much-needed infusion of application development.

The consortium, led by phone giant Nokia, was initially greeted with skepticism by the media and industry analysts, many of whom noted the lack of a major software developer among the list of participating companies. But at the end of the year, Nokia announced that a number of heavy software hitters--among them Oracle, Sun, and BEA Systems--have signed on, potentially giving open mobile critical application support and new relevance in a market stung by poor 2001 sales numbers and lackluster demand for advanced, high-speed services.

Grand Opening

The open mobile architecture (it still lacked a formal name at press time) is an attempt to avoid the plague of proprietary software standards that has fragmented other markets (think PDAs and digital audio, not to mention operating systems) and give consumers the ability to use a single phone across the planet and at the same time take advantage of a globally-available set of services while doing so. The consortium's founding companies include a broad cross-section of phone OEMs and carriers, and include AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless, MM02, NTT DoCoMo, Telefonica Moviles, Vodafone, Fujitsu, Matsushita, Mitsubishi Electric, Motorola, NEC, Samsung, Sharp, Siemens, Sony, Ericsson, and Toshiba (as well as the aforementioned Nokia).

Look closely, however, and you'll notice a glaring omission: Microsoft, and any other large independent software vendor. In fact, the sole software company named in the initial announcement is Symbian, which develops the operating system used in Nokia phones (among a few others). While according to company literature Symbian is ostensibly a "private, independent company," in reality it is an arm of several powerful phone and chip vendors, and is jointly owned by Ericsson, Matsushita, Motorola, and Nokia, (as well as Psion).

Critics of the open mobile initiative had contended that, since Symbian was the only software name in the group, the initiative was simply a thinly-veiled attempt by the Symbian backers (and Nokia in particular) to control the operating system market for mobile phones. Suspicion grew as Nokia announced that it would license Series 60 (its mobile OS based on Symbian) to other phone makers.

In particular, critics questioned the lack of support from Microsoft. Redmond has its own phone OS, Stinger, and is also angling for a piece of the mobile pie. Any initiative that truly seeks to unify this market, went the logic, would need to include Gates & Company to avoid a fractious standards battle, a divisive war which would have few winners and many corporate and consumer losers.

"Nokia is passionate about keeping Microsoft out of their space," contends Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney. "This standard really isn't a standard at all: it doesn't even have a name yet," Dulaney notes. "It is fundamentally a standard for Nokia phones, although other companies may use some pieces of it."

Nokia disagrees. According to Nokia officials, open mobile will "provide consumers with a wide selection of different competitive, yet interoperable terminals and services, and hence promote significant industry growth, and also aim to ensure that economies of scale are enjoyed throughout the industry." The company contends that far from being an attempt to control the OS market for phones, open mobile seeks to make the relatively closed market available to a number of different vendors using standard, industry-accepted technologies.

"The goal of OMA [the open mobile architecture] is interoperability: to get manufacturers to commit to a standard set of technologies so that applications residing on a phone can share data with other devices," says Randy Roberts, Director of Digital Convergence at Nokia. Roberts does admit that there has been some confusion because of the Nokia announcement--separate from the open mobile initiative--that it is licensing its Series 60 OS to other manufacturers; Series 60 is based on Symbian.

Nokia announced in December that BEA, Borland, HP, IBM, Oracle, and Sun would join the group, and that all have agreed to work with network infrastructure companies to create mobile services using J2EE application servers. Nokia says that to facilitate the specification process for J2EE APIs, the companies have agreed to jointly prepare the specification proposals prior to submitting them to the Java Community Process.

Devil In The Details

Specifics on precisely what technologies open mobile will include, however, are in short supply. The group has said in press materials (and Roberts confirms) that it will make use of WAP2.0/XHTML, MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), SyncML, and other 3GPP-compliant technologies. The proposed set of technologies would work over GSM networks, which are currently just being rolled out in this country, and presumably over GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) as well.