Word: symbian
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...sales. "I foresee an absolutely huge future for the pretty amazing new stuff that's going to be added to the mobile phone," says Martin Heath, a telecommunications specialist for consultants KPMG in London. "There will be tremendous battles for who controls the value of this chain. Symbian has the advantage, but it's 10 yds. in a marathon, not 10 yards in the 100-yd. dash...
That led Potter to approach Nokia, Ericsson and later Motorola--which has agreed in principle to join Symbian--with an offer to use Psion's operating system EPOC as the basis for smart phones. He offered a remarkable deal, taking only 31% of Symbian and selling the remainder to the three phone giants for $50 million. "Companies like Nokia and Ericsson are concerned about ending up like the manufacturers of personal computers, becoming box shifters for Microsoft," says Martin Butler, a British computer consultant. "Potter could become the Bill Gates of the portable-device marketplace. It's there waiting...
When the giants agreed to an alliance, Psion became the Cinderella of the mobile-phone world. Analysts figured that if it won 15% of the mobile-phone market projected for 2003, Psion's share of Symbian alone could be worth $430 million a year. The deal also meant that Psion's computers might find more customers. Psion's depressed shares soared as a result, from $3.36 to $12 on the London Stock Exchange. "For a while it looked like Psion was finished, but by getting together with the dominant players in the telecom industry and partnering with them, they have...
...only Philips Electronics has actually licensed Psion's software for use in a smart phone, but the software has a compelling advantage: Symbian is charging just $5 a phone, while Microsoft charges computer makers $25 for each device that uses Windows CE, according to analysts. Jan Ahrenbring, an Ericsson vice president, adds that Microsoft's operating system "really wasn't applicable for mobile," but Microsoft maintains that the software is modular and can be customized to suit customers needs. South Korean manufacturer Samsung has produced the prototype of a Windows CE phone that it plans to market next year...
...addition to Symbian, the telecommunications industry has formed two other alliances to improve the usability of wireless devices. One of them, called the WAP Forum (for Wireless Application Protocol), is designing special browsers to bring Internet data to mobile phones, while a group named Bluetooth is trying to set a universal standard for radio communications between smart devices like palm computers and mobile phones. Interestingly, Microsoft has not joined either group...