MICROSOFT INVADES WIRELESS DATA

A year after joining the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association and pledging interest in the wireless industry, Microsoft took a major step toward entering the wireless data marketplace-but not without threatening the biggest players in wireless.

Last week at the CTIA's Wireless I.T. show, Microsoft said it is developing a microbrowser independently of the Wireless Application Protocol Forum which in March released the open wireless mark-up language (WML) microbrowser specification.

"I'd be scared if I was a browser developer right now," said Matt Desch, president of Nortel Networks.

Because Microsoft is not working within the WML specification, members of the forum, which include Ericsson, Motorola, Unwired Planet and Nokia, fear that the software giant will drive them out of the microbrowser market or require them to work within its dictates.

"They are after control of that space," said Skip Bryan, director of technology marketing for Ericsson's American standards business group. Ericsson recently introduced a WAP gateway and service developer's kit.

Microsoft released few details of the planned microbrowser, fueling speculation. The product will be entirely Internet protocol-based and designed to exploit existing Web content, said Cameron Myhrvold, vice president of Microsoft's Internet customer unit. He stressed that application developers would not have to rewrite code such as hypertext mark-up language to make their content available to wireless phone users-although he could not describe how.

The microbrowser is part of a company strategy to address the wireless needs of smaller computing devices, including palm, hand-held, wireless and auto PC products. The microbrowser is currently undergoing laboratory trials. A three-phase rollout includes field trials at the end of this year with commercial delivery next year, he said.

Clearly on the defensive, wireless players involved in the development of the WML specification criticized Microsoft's microbrowser.

Bryan speculated that Microsoft's solution will link only with a Microsoft server and will contact only Microsoft programs.

"Microsoft doesn't believe in open standards and can't make money with them," said Naqi Jaffrey, wireless analyst for Dataquest.

Microsoft's admitted lack of wireless marketplace knowledge also may lead it astray, said Greg Heumann, director of product marketing for Unwired Planet. He said the WAP specification addresses the same concepts as Microsoft-and more. Where Microsoft is focusing on Web browsing as the main utility of the microbrowser, he said, Unwired Planet's carrier customers want to reduce service costs by letting users provision services and access billing information.

Despite all the competitive fears, Microsoft's microbrowser symbolizes a significant "blessing" of wireless data that can only fuel the industry, said Fran Firth, senior analyst for mobile data information service for Cahners In-Stat Group.

"It may be a critical enabler," Desch agreed.

AT&T Wireless is open to employing anything that can help proliferate usage, said a spokesman. AT&T currently uses Unwired Planet's browser for its PocketNet service.

Browser-enabled devices likely won't penetrate the market quickly, Jaffrey noted. So Microsoft, with its virtually unlimited resources, may develop a solid browser just in time for the market to open to a wider audience, he said.