GSM wins with Motorola, Psion Dacom deal

Hot on the heels of Monday's deal with Dell, Psion Dacom this morning said it has licensed Motorola's cell phone interface, allowing its GSM PC Cards to be used with Motorola cell phones.

Under the terms of the agreement, Psion Dacom and Motorola's PC-card division Motorola Communicate will work together to produce an interface kit for Motorola's GSM900, GSM1800 and GSM1900 handsets, which include the Motorola StarTAC, SlimLite and 8000 series digital mobile phones.

"This announcement means that our Gold Card Global range has unrivalled compatibility with a range of data interface kits for the leading cellular handsets," said Gareth Hughes, managing director at Psion Dacom.

Separately, Bill Pechey, chief engineering officer at communications specialist Hayes, lauded Psion Dacom's deal to supply Dell with hundreds of thousands of PC Card modems: "We wish them well and hope they succeed. It's nice to see a British company do well. I don't think we were competing for that deal though."

"Psion Dacom's strength was its depth of country coverage," said Dave Marshall, Dell European brand manager for notebooks. "We ask US modem makers what validations they have in Europe and it's usually three or four countries. [The Dell-Psion Dacom deal] is a bit of a shock for [US firms] I suppose. You speak to Americans and they're jealous of us having GSM.'

Hayes' Pechey added the GSM market will come into its own in the next two years: "The forecasts are for 10 million users in Europe by the end of the century. There are two million at the moment."

Modem rival 3Com US Robotics, the world's biggest modem maker, was unavailable for comment.