TOKYO—NTT DoCoMo, the leading mobile carrier in Japan, and Nokia, the world’s largest mobile handset vender, announced they will jointly develop a common middleware platform for third-generation (3G) services. Based on the bilateral agreement, the two firms will develop a common platform for wideband-CDMA (W-CDMA) based on three areas—browsing, multimedia messaging and application execution environment.
At the Tokyo press conference held on 14 November, Jorma Ollila, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nokia, said: “In order for the personal communications to work universally, we need to have a common-based standard to work on.”
Keiji Tachikawa, president of NTT DoCoMo, said: “Unlike past mobile services, recent mobile services are heavily relying on software. Through our own experience, we have learned we need efforts to develop common technology in this field (middleware) in order to spread out the 3G services in the world.”
According to Tachikawa, the two firms are targeting to work out the common platform for browsing by the end of this year, for multimedia messaging by 2003 and for application execution environment by 2002.
Tachikawa also mentioned that the companies are now soliciting other operators and vendors to their joint action program and are considering launching joint efforts in other key areas, such as security, download technology, authentication and billing.
Nokia on 13 November announced that it would launch a consortium to develop common architecture to enable interoperable terminals and services. Some 20 companies supported the initiative. According to Tachikawa, the bilateral joint action announced on 14 November is a sub-initiative of the Nokia-led program strictly focused on W-CDMA-based 3G services.
