LAS VEGAS-Microsoft Corp. announced last week at Wireless I.T. in Las Vegas plans to create a microbrowser designed specifically for handheld wireless devices to access Web content.
According to Cameron Myhrvold, vice president of the company’s Internet consumer unit, this microbrowser will support such Internet standards as Extensible Markup Language, HyperText Transfer Protocol and Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. The idea, he said, is to create a system thin enough for use by pagers and mobile phones so they can access e-mail and other general Web content without-and here’s the clincher-any modification to the Web sites.
The leading microbrowser for wireless phones today, the UP.Browser from Unwired Planet, can only access Web pages written in a specific language. To make Web content available to wireless devices, a company must create two Web sites, with two addresses. One site would be accessible by standard desktop browsers, such as Netscape or Microsoft Explorer, and another accessible by the UP.Browser.
The reason for this scenario is that a standard Web site contains much more content than can be read or is needed on a mobile phone. Therefore, mobile users simply enter a different Web address to access content designed specifically for them.
Unwired Planet’s solution is the only option available today for operators wishing to extend Web content to their subscribers. AT&T Wireless Inc., for example, uses the UP.Browser for its PocketNet service.
But what Microsoft proposes is a microbrowser that can access the same Web site all other browsers do, except this microbrowser somehow will be able to send back only the content appropriate for use on mobile phones or pagers.
How exactly it plans to achieve this is a matter of wide speculation, but one general consensus is that if it works, the proposed microbrowser likely could put Unwired Planet out of business.
The most prevalent hypothesis is that Microsoft will leverage its Web site construction clout to do this. Microsoft created FrontPage, an HTML programming language used to create most Web sites. Those Web sites made with FrontPage could be written in a way that would instruct the site to convert automatically its content to whatever language is best received by the browser used.
So when the site realizes it is being accessed by a microbrowser on a cell phone, rather than a desktop browser, it immediately would convert its content into a form best read by that microbrowser. If the code in the browser and the code in the Web site both were written by Microsoft, it would be a simple matter to build a front end that knows how to convert automatically its content to a version capable of wireless transmission and readable by wireless devices.
However, this is merely a guess shared by several industry insiders. Exactly what Microsoft plans to create is unknown. The product is still in the lab, and the company is negotiating with cellular carriers and handset makers for them to use the microbrowser when it is released.
Microsoft plans to make the microbrowser available for testing before the end of the year, with initial market availability early next year and a commercial rollout sometime later.
“They certainly have our attention,” said Greg Heumann, director of product marketing at Unwired Planet. He said the company always expected Microsoft to enter the microbrowser market at some point, and even put a positive spin on the announcement. “This will raise the visibility as only Microsoft can do,” he said. Most users misunderstand what it means to access the Web via handheld wireless devices, he explained, as many mistake it as meaning they can surf the Internet on a phone just as they do on the desktop.
But behind this appearance of calm acceptance likely is some degree of foreboding. Microsoft is not known as a company that plays well with others. Its reputation as a ruthless competitor bent on dominating whatever market it enters has many expecting Microsoft will attempt to crush Unwired Planet and possibly even render moot the work accomplished to date by the Wireless Application Protocol.
The very nature of the announcement is used by some to support this view. Microsoft has a history of announcing the intention to produce something before it has anything substantive to release. It’s a common Microsoft ploy, creating a buzz that serves to stall other initiatives bent on producing a similar and competing product.
The WAP Forum lately has been moving along at a good clip, and this announcement could take some wind out of its sails. Some executives said they expect carriers and handset manufactures to abandon the WAP process in favor of Microsoft’s solution.
For their part, carriers have said if the difference between Microsoft’s microbrowser and the WAP solution is transparent to them, they’d use both.
In the meantime, the industry is waiting for Microsoft to better define this proposed microbrowser. Some say things will become more clear by Comdex, which is in mid-November.
