There’s an ancient Japanese custom in which a man wooing a woman leaves romantic haiku poems tied to flowers or branches on her front lawn every day for as long as it takes until the woman agrees to accept his advances. According to one legend, a man did this for a full year before winning the woman of his dreams.
This dedicated suitor seems to have much in common with Microsoft Corp. Although the wireless space to date has not proven an overly friendly one to the software giant, it refuses to go away, as its presence and announcements at Wireless 2000 clearly show.
Bill Gates and company unveiled a new, interactive version of its MSN Mobile.com wireless Internet portal, which it said is better optimized for wireless networks, and also announced a strategic alliance with Qualcomm Inc. to develop Code Division Multiple Access smart phones embedded with the Mobile Internet Explorer dual-mode microbrowser.
Like the many other software firms and dot-com companies, Microsoft wants to play in the wireless space. The two ways to do so are to be a technology enabler or a content provider. Microsoft’s announcements show it wants to do both.
Most view the MSN Mobile announcement as the bigger news. While the first edition of MSN Mobile was merely a wireless extension of Microsoft’s MSN.com wireline Web site, version 2.0 was re-built with wireless applications and needs in mind, the company said.
The redesigned portal extends Hotmail Web-based e-mail, MSN MoneyCentral personal financial information, MSNBC.com news, eShop shopping and Expedia.com travel services to wireless users in an interactive form.
Carriers Nextel Communications Inc. and AirTouch Cellular both agreed to offer the portal’s full range of interactive services to their Internet-enabled user base, while WebLink Wireless Inc. and TotallyFreePaging.com Inc. will extend a one-way of MSN Mobile notification services.
These carrier partnerships are extremely important to Microsoft, who is competing with other Internet portal brands to extend content to wireless devices. America Online Inc.’s content deal with Sprint PCS illustrates the heated nature of this particular battle. AOL leads Microsoft in the content game in terms of subscribers to its site. But the two are considered neck-and-neck in the mobile space. Analysts say its too early to start naming winners or losers.
“This is a very young technology,” said Rob Enderle, analyst at Giga Information Group. “It’s still not clear to me whether people want to use this stuff, let alone see who’s the leader … We don’t have the combination of hardware and services that’s compelling yet.”
Microsoft’s alliance with Qualcomm addresses this device issue. While content is all well and good, Microsoft is a software company first and foremost with a stated mission to add its Windows operating system technology in basically everything.
However, Qualcomm is only licensing the Mobile Internet Explorer microbrowser, not Windows CE, a version of the Windows OS designed for smaller computing devices. Many feel WinCE is too bandwidth demanding, and therefore not the best technology for wireless devices.
As such, the Symbian initiative, which promotes a wireless OS based on Psion plc’s EPOC OS, has taken a substantial lead in the wireless platform race. In fact, Qualcomm announced a partnership with Symbian last week to integrate its Internet Mobile Station Modem with the Symbian platform.
“Symbian’s already got these things on prototype devices. Microsoft isn’t even close,” said Matt Hoffman, analyst at SoundView Technology Group. “We believe Symbian is far out in the lead in putting a real OS on smartphones and communicators.”
Microsoft promises to release a better version of WinCE. While it continues to work on doing so, the company is pushing its Mobile Internet Explorer microbrowser technology instead.
“The big picture here for Microsoft is that with Windows CE not being accepted by the wireless industry, the browser is going to be their entrance to the mobile phone market,” Hoffman said. “Remember, this is how Netscape attacked the Internet market. The browser turned out to be the key piece of software in the Internet world. The OS is there, but the browser may be the sweet spot of the market.”
But Qualcomm is only the third big-name phone manufacturer to adopt the microbrowser, behind L.M. Ericsson and Sony Corp., and some analysts feel few will follow in the near-term.
