Industry Leaders Announce Commitment to Open Mobile Architecture Enabling a Non-Fragmented Global Mobile Services Market

Business Wire, Nov 12, 2001

High Tech & Business Editors

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 12, 2001

AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless, MM02, NTT DoCoMo, Telefonica Moviles, Vodafone, Fujitsu, Matsushita, Mitsubishi Electric, Motorola,

NEC, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and

Symbian to commit to products and services based on open mobile

architecture enablers

A number of industry leaders have today announced a commitment to create a global and open mobile software and services market.

The initiative, launched by AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless, MM02, NTT DoCoMo, Telefonica Moviles, Vodafone, Fujitsu, Matsushita, Mitsubishi Electric, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Symbian, marks an important milestone as industry stakeholders come together to boost the early introduction of new, interoperable mobile internet access and visual contents downloading services worldwide, utilizing the GSM/GPRS evolution and coming 3G mobile telecommunications networks adopting WCDMA technology. By following consistent global and open standards, these industry leaders will be able to 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 companies will conduct mobile software development in full compliance with the specifications of the key industry standardization organizations such as the 3GPP and the WAP Forum. The companies supporting the initiative will continue to actively participate in these standards bodies to expedite the acceptance and deployment of these specifications to fuel further industry growth. The scope of this industry initiative encompasses terminal client software modules for mobile terminal vendors, and the corresponding server solutions for mobile operators.

Doing this will offer mobile operators, systems integrators, IT suppliers, terminal manufacturers, and application developers new avenues of growth and revenue by enabling a multi-vendor ecosystem, which is built on open industry standards such as WAP2.0/XHTML, MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), SyncML and other 3GPP compliant technologies. Additional important component examples of the initiative include Java(TM) technology and the Symbian OS.

AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless, MM02, NTT DoCoMo, Telefonica Moviles, Vodafone, Fujitsu, Matsushita, Mitsubishi Electric, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Symbian commit to products and services based on these enablers. They will form the foundation for an open mobile services architecture, which will benefit the whole industry as the fastest route to true global mass markets, offering equal growth opportunities to all parties in the value chain.

For consumers, open standards ensure genuinely competitive products and true freedom of choice. They will also enable consumers to retain control of their own information and services usage. An additional benefit is the intuitive common usability of the mobile services.

"This initiative is all about making sure that we stretch the market potential of future mobile services to the maximum. By starting this initiative, the industry leaders are coming together to realize the growth opportunity of the decade. Our sole aim is to enable a global and open mobile services market, which will assist people in building their own mobile world and give them active control of their own lifestyles and preferences. The lessons of the past have taught us a lot about what people want and how important it is to respect individual choices. An open and global services platform is of paramount importance for the industry in order to meet the expectations of our highly demanding customers and to boost innovation through independent software developers. Nokia will contribute to the creation of the services market by offering its client and server software for licensing as source code, openly and on equal terms," said Mr. Jorma Ollila, Chairman and CEO, Nokia.

"As an industry, we need to work together to define and develop a platform that will allow us to quickly enhance the wireless features and services we provide our customers," said Mr. Rod Nelson, chief technology officer for AT&T Wireless. "The continued success and growth for global wireless services hinges on the ability for companies to work from similar blueprints."

"mmO2 is supportive of initiatives that encourage industry cooperation and that target the universal advancement of mobile services. The focus of this initiative is to improve our ability to deploy revenue generating services to a broader base of customers. Progress in solving fundamental compatibility issues helps to pave the way for our shared success and ultimately the satisfaction and benefit of our customers," noted Mr. Kent Thexton, President, Genie and Chief Data & Marketing Officer of mmO2.

"NTT DoCoMo has launched the fully commercialized 3G service as of 1st October 2001. In order to accelerate the introduction of mobile internet access, mobile visual communications and other services for 3G networks based on W-CDMA technology, NTT DoCoMo is eager to cooperate with other key players in the mobile communications industry to elaborate protocols and mark-up languages based on a standards-compliant, open architecture. Through these activities, we will achieve early development and deployment of mobile terminals, infrastructure solutions and server equipment, and also strengthen relationships with content providers and enhanced user experience, contributing to increased worldwide demands for mobile multimedia." Dr. Keiji Tachikawa, CEO, NTT DoCoMo.