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Leader: Who will enterprises crown the winners in wireless?

By opening their wallets and flashing the greatest trophy of all...
Written by silicon.com staff, Contributor

By opening their wallets and flashing the greatest trophy of all...

Are user organisations any closer to figuring out where to place their bets in mobile? The major platforms are now fairly defined - and in the long-term they centre on operating systems from Microsoft, PalmSource, Symbian and arguably a couple of others. But the battle by one to gain an advantage - any advantage - over the other is ongoing and intense. And that's just in cellular. The roles other technologies will play in our wireless future add a further layer of complexity.

Let's consider two things: what business users want and what the industry is delivering.

silicon.com's latest CIO Jury resulted in a three-to-one thumbs down for third-generation mobile technology. That isn't to say 3G won't ultimately be a success but it is a vote by those in charge of ICT at a handful of major organisations that they are willing to wait for the offerings to mature and even consider alternatives.

At the 3GSM World Congress conference in Cannes this week arguably the most notable trend has been celebration of the final push to make 3G a reality in Europe this year. It is hard to find anyone present who won't say 3G, based on the W-CDMA standard, won't become commercially mass market during 2004.

That's a relief on many levels but building it is one thing, getting them to come is another. Users, silicon.com's constituency, will wait for the right time to make any move. Fair enough. As Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila pointed out on Wednesday morning: "Enterprises and CIOs are an extremely demanding target group."

In the meantime they watch a world where Intel, for example, doesn't only evangelise 3G, a market where it will increasingly make money from chips, but several concentric circles of wireless connectivity.

This starts at the level of RFID and other smart tags, moves to personal area network technology including Bluetooth plus upcoming, faster technologies, reaches the wireless LAN (typically Wi-Fi, where Intel's Centrino success is plain to see), the metro level and then the wide area, where WiMAX - the 802.16 standard that is one of the hot topics of 2004 - will mean all sorts of possibilities.

But even within this big picture, control for the guts of most future phones is critical. Smart phones which, like computers these days, are mostly about software will make up an increasing proportion of sales and are a high-value market segment - certainly for those peddling them but also for users when done properly.

While Symbian this week revealed two new licensees and very positive figures for last year and the last quarter, the focus was very much on its ownership changes. Nokia is about to boost its holding in the company, almost to a point where it has official control (the 70 per cent mark). Some analysts and all competitors have been arguing it does indeed have de facto control.

It could be that Microsoft, for example, needn't do much more than let Symbian get into problems of its own to make progress.

Last week PalmSource CEO David Nagel also said: "In the short term, [the change in Symbian ownership] won't have enormous impact. But in the long term, every handset vendor is saying they don't want to be dependent on Microsoft, Nokia or someone else. When we go to visit them they've already figured this out."

Ericsson, along with Matsushita, Samsung and Siemens, retains a holding in Symbian, and the company's CEO, Carl-Henric Svanberg, yesterday said: "Everyone who's a stakeholder wants Symbian to be the alternative." The warning was that if Nokia pushes it too much the way it wants to go, "the [other stakeholders] will look to other solutions, both Microsoft and others out there".

PalmSource is conceivably one such alternative, and after eyeing smart phones more so than a stagnant PDA market recently it has been making some interesting noises. Linux is another option, more probably for older telecom equipment companies. Witness Motorola's 2003 Symbian exit and Linux backing.

Still waiting in the wings for any traction is Java pureplay SavaJe, though even it may have something to announce soon, perhaps also to the disappointment of Symbian.

Arguably the cellular world - with the exception of the availability of faster bearer technologies - isn't much clearer than it was a year ago. While that's the case, expect those spending corporate technology budgets to remain conservative, doubtful of industry hype and willing only to trial certain advances or tactically embrace options such as wireless LANs.

The mobile industry report card would read: 'Good but could be doing better.'

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