Buying knowledge

Sometimes, wireless data development alliances seem nearly as numerous as wireless data customers. Although wireless data usage is still nominal, the new threat of Microsoft as a possible competitor, with yet another strategy, may light a fire under vendors working in the wireless data arena.

In November, Microsoft announced Wireless Knowledge, a joint venture with Qualcomm to develop wireless data systems. The new venture is one initiative in a larger strategy to pursue wireless data, according to Microsoft officials. Specifics on how the new company will accomplish its goals have been withheld. "Wireless Knowledge asks more questions than it answers," says Alasdair Manson, director of evangelism for Symbian.

Regardless, Wireless Knowledge may be just what's needed to get wireless data off the ground. Industry players have been saying that data is on the verge of exploding-but years have passed with little to show. Manson believes wireless data's questionable history started with vendors setting inflated expectations and developing products that required a Ph.D. in Internet protocol to use.

Manufacturers are now beginning to develop more usable products because of the efforts of two groups, Symbian and the Wireless Application Forum. Symbian-a joint venture formed by Psion, Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola-is devoted to developing the EPOC operating system. Designed for voice-centric wireless devices that have sophisticated data capabilities, EPOC currently runs the Psion Series V.

The WAP Forum has set standards for a microbrowser and server that deliver Web content to wireless handsets. WAP products can access Web content written in a standard markup language, called HDML, which essentially pares down HTML documents for better viewing on the small screens of phones.

Now that Microsoft has entered the fray outside both those organizations, what position will each of these companies and initiatives take in the future wireless data world?

No operating system to dominate Despite its size and powerful brand name, Microsoft may not overtake the wireless data industry. Strategy Analytics recently published a report predicting that no single company or standard will dominate the hand-held device market (Figure 1).

Instead, different products will serve different segments of the market, depending on applications. For example, EPOC is considered to be the most suitable operating system for the type of real-time applications that will be typical of smart phone users, according to the study. Microsoft will lead the market for stripped-down data devices but will be much less powerful in the wireless world than the overall PC market, says Mark Holden, service director for Strategy Analytics. Eventually, Java will likely dominate the hand-held computing world overall, making the operating system issue less important, Holden says.

Symbian believes it has commercial and technical advantages over other operating systems in the market or under development. Some wireless players might be concerned with one vendor controlling a software standard for fear that it might become commoditized, like the PC market, Manson says. Fear of commoditization is one reason that the four partners formed Symbian to create a standard and promote a variety of products.

Most participants in Strategy Analytics' survey rated EPOC-based products higher than Microsoft products in technical performance. "EPOC is designed with wireless mobile devices in mind," Manson says. "It's not a desktop text squeezed into a smaller package to extend to different environments." Because EPOC was designed from the start for small wireless devices, it is "miserly" in memory use and efficiently uses battery and processing power.

Manson also points to the requirement of handset operating systems to be highly reliable-more so than users expect of their computers. "When was the last time your cell phone crashed?" he says. While users have come to expect their PCs to crash, they don't expect their wireless devices to crash.

Microsoft is working on a scaled-down version of Windows CE for wireless phones. The company will consider the demands of wireless users as it develops the product, says Enzo Schiano, lead product manager for Windows CE at Microsoft. He described the effort as a long-term project and could not provide further details or a time frame for its delivery.

The CE product will likely have some advantages over others such as those based on EPOC. Microsoft will probably be able to offer products at lower prices than others, according to the Strategy Analytics report.

The overall Wireless Knowledge model addresses a shortcoming in other data solutions available today, notes Bill Leung, director of product management for Bellcore's Airboss group. Wireless Knowledge, which will combine an operating system, microbrowser and server, will be offered on a service bureau basis (Figure 2). Current vendors require operators to invest in and manage systems, and some blame that model for the slow uptake of wireless data solutions.

microbrowser segment to fragment Even though nearly everyone in the industry is a member of the WAP Forum and many refer to WAP as the de facto standard, the microbrowser industry is showing signs of fragmentation. Bellcore is an example of a company that has chosen to work outside that standards effort. The company has developed a microbrowser that supports HDML.

Bellcore focuses mainly on datacentric devices for the microbrowser, such as the RIM Interactive pager, palm devices and Windows CE devices, Leung says. The company isn't averse to working with handset manufacturers, but Bellcore officials say they are much more cumbersome to work with. "Now we're taking the route available to us," Leung says.

Those data-centric products have support programs built around them which makes it easy for third parties to build applications around them. In contrast, handset manufacturers require a closer partnership that is often difficult to achieve and time consuming, he says.

In addition, Bellcore believes more demand lies in vertical or enterprise solutions, mostly those served by data-centric devices. "We don't believe the horizontal market is there," Leung says.

Microsoft also plans to develop a microbrowser outside the WAP Forum that should be available early this year. The company was developing a tool to convert Web content written in HTML to content easily read on a handset, but it has stopped working on such a tool, Schiano says. Instead, the microbrowser will read content written in XML, the latest markup language for writing Web sites.

XML is only a framework and requires a specific language to be written to it. The WAP Forum has defined such a language, HDML, to deliver Web content to the small screens of wireless handsets. Microsoft has not described how it plans to deliver content to its microbrowser, but because it is not a member of the WAP Forum it likely won't use HDML.

Timing may ultimately contribute to what the wireless data market will look like. Microsoft's significant resources may allow it to quickly develop a microbrowser and CE product for handsets. In the meantime, phones are being manufactured by all the major vendors-including Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola-with WAP-based microbrowsers. In addition, Symbian, with its heavyweight backers, has made significant headway, especially in Europe.

Microsoft may be entering the market late, but the presence of such a strong foe is urging faster development and dedication by other players.