Hope prevails despite history

Some of the world’s biggest companies-Google, Apple, Microsoft-increasingly are becoming more aggressive in the wireless space. And why shouldn’t they? CTIA counts 250 million cellphone subscribers in the United States-a penetration rate of more than 83%.
It’s great to have new entrants in the market, and Google, Apple and Microsoft are stellar companies. (Granted, Microsoft has been playing in wireless for more than a decade, but I would contend it’s paying more attention to wireless today than ever before.)
But it’s not an easy game to play. In fact, sometimes I think this industry is stuck in neutral. Reading old RCR Wireless News stories for this column didn’t do much to change my mind.
● Google is trying its hand with an open-source operating platform. We’ve been writing about open-source mobile platforms since 2000, only then, the platform of choice was Linux. It still hasn’t made significant traction in the wireless OS category.
Google may fare better; offering up $10 million to spur developers to take a look at its software development kit. That money may be the best the search giant ever spent if its strategy is realized. In the short-term, however, Google’s OS just further fragments the market.
● Microsoft announced last month it has set up a business to help sell wireless telephony into the enterprise. Microsoft has been trying to include wireless as part of its unified communications system since 1996, when it announced that 40 companies had committed to building products that would use Windows CE, “a 32-bit operating system platform that can support a broad range of communications, computing and entertainment products, including those for wireless networks.”
● Apple has given other handset manufacturers hope that people will pay several hundred dollars for a device. Nevertheless the company popped to mind when discussing hearing-aid compatibility last week. Apple doesn’t comply today, but will have to if it wants to expand beyond one phone. (I cannot believe we are still writing about hearing-aid compliance for handsets-an issue we have been covering since 1995. Enough already.)
So where do I get hope? This time, I think the end users are ready to embrace the next great developments in what we used to call the Worldwide Wireless Web.