SANTA CLARA, Calif.-The Symbian initiative unveiled several new product enhancements through deals announced at the Symbian Developers Conference.
An agreement with Communication Intelligence Corp. added the company’s Jot handwriting recognition system, QuickNotes electronic note-taking application, WordComplete predictive text-entry utility and Sign-On biometric security application to the EPOC operating system options. L.M. Ericsson’s R380 will be the first to integrate the Jot system, the company said, allowing users to enter data without using a keypad.
Earlier in the week, Motorola Inc.’s Lexicus division announced it would include its entire input technology suite-including the iTAP text-entry system, natural-handwriting and speech-recognition features-on Symbian’s EPOC platform.
Symbian member Nokia Corp. last year made a separate agreement with Palm Computing to add its handwriting-input technology to future phones. Many saw the deal as potentially weakening Nokia’s relationship with Symbian, even though Nokia said it remained committed to EPOC.
In a separate announcement, IBM Corp. and Symbian announced a joint-development agreement to create wireless enterprise applications for Symbian products, specifically allowing workers to access corporate data from their phones and then work with the information offline.
“In the next few years, mobile phones are expected to be one of the primary devices used to access the network,” said Mark Bregman, general manager of IBM’s pervasive computing division. “With our experience in working with the world’s largest enterprises, we will partner with the development community to create wireless applications that allow business users of Symbian devices to be as productive offline as when they are connected to the network.”
The plan is to add embedded extensions of IBM’s messaging and database middleware on top of the Symbian platform.
Meanwhile, Extended Systems Inc. demonstrated its XTNDConnect Server 2.4 server-based synchronization technology for the EPOC platform, giving Symbian-based phones access to Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino servers, as well as Microsoft SQL, Oracle and Advantage Database servers.
Finally, Wipro Technologies Ltd., a software-development and systems-integration company in India, said it formed a strategic partnership with Symbian to offer its business, development, engineering and project-management services to Symbian and its licensees. According to the agreement, Wipro will create Competence Centers to fulfill this obligation, with the goal of speeding the time-to-market of Symbian devices.
“Acting as an extension of Symbian’s organization, the Symbian Competence Centers are independent companies who have the skills and expertise to manage, create and develop products in close cooperation with Symbian’s licensees,” said Juha Christensen, executive vice president of Symbian.
Interestingly enough, Wipro also has a research-and-development deal with Microsoft Corp., Symbian’s primary rival, to help enhance the capabilities of Microsoft’s Windows 2000, Windows CE and Internet applications.
