Re:Viewing 2003 - Mobile and wireless

Lots going on and so much of it positive

2003 started on something of a low point. Sales of mobile handsets had failed to increase for the first time ever over the previous 12 months and general geo-political uncertainty, not to mention a recent telecoms industry downturn profiled in The Great Telecoms Swindle on silicon.com, meant this was a sector that couldn't yet be optimistic.

But we leave 2003 in better shape, due to a number of developments.

Leaving aside the explosive growth of Wi-Fi for a minute and concentrating on all things cellular, it is clear 2003 was the year of the camera phone. Our columnists spoke in those terms in January and the spread of MMS-capable and interoperable networks gave them a boost. So what if by year's end Meta Group were calling such devices a "liability" in some circumstances - they represent one type of application that is helping the industry just about find its feet again.

Before the incomparable mobile industry jamboree in Cannes now known as 3GSM Congress, there were already one or two interesting moves being made. Siemens - one of the handset success stories of 2003 in this publication's opinion - showed off trendy wearable phones. Not convinced? By the latter half of the year Nokia was touting necklace phones. Must be something in it.

But what of the big handset manufacturers? Nokia remains top dog but is being challenged on a number of fronts. Interestingly, it is becoming a more consumer-oriented company with the launch of its N-Gage game deck-phone hybrid - which we had mixed feelings about - and 'media-centric' devices as well as more of an enterprise play, setting up a unit with that moniker and looking at corporate email and other apps closely, alongside its established security and networks businesses.

Indeed, by November we saw rumours that Nokia might buy Psion, a fellow stakeholder in mobile operating system venture Symbian. The prospect - while perhaps logical for Nokia - threw up more question marks about Symbian's future. SonyEricsson, another of its shareholders, came out fighting for the company but the speculation only compounded remarks made to silicon.com in October by PalmSource CEO David Nagel.

But in spite of the sparring, Symbian comes out of 2003 on the up. Previous years saw it keeping its profile low but now it is appearing in ever-increasing numbers of handsets, some 3G, and even putting out quarterly results figures almost exactly like a listed company. So when's the IPO guys?

Also criticised by PalmSource's Nagel - and more on Palm in a second - was Microsoft. This was the year it brought its handheld OS plays under the Windows Mobile brand and significantly won Motorola, ex-stakeholder in Symbian, as a user of its mobile phone OS in the MPx200 on Orange.

But overall Microsoft made few mobile advances, though a new version of the SPV, made by HTC in Taiwan, added Bluetooth and an integrated camera.

Perhaps most worryingly for Gates and co were comments by two operators towards the end of the year. Japan's DoCoMo said it will concentrate on Linux- and Symbian-based devices above Microsoft, while Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin, while not writing off Microsoft in handsets, said its mobile OS is "not quite ready for prime time".

Palm moved increasingly from a still small PDA market, buying Handspring and releasing the impressive Treo 600 smart phone. We predict a bright future here - for Palm OS-based devices in general - after calling the previous generation Treo one of the flops of last year.

And of course there was the UK's Sendo. While legal action with Microsoft may have been a damp squib, it did release a smart phone based on the Symbian OS and Nokia's Series 60 interface.

But having mentioned Vodafone's Sarin, it is interesting to note the exit of two major figures in mobile. Vodafone appointed Sarin as its leader at the end of July as Sir Chris Gent, the man who masterminded the acquisitions of AirTouch, Mannesmann and Japan Telecom, retired. Vodafone knew Sarin from his time at AirTouch and that company's morphing into Verizon Wireless. Early signs show him to be an accomplished executive, though the pressure will be on.

Meanwhile at Motorola, Chris Galvin, grandson of the telecoms equipment giant's founder, stepped aside for a familiar face, ex-Sun COO Ed Zander.

On the networks side, 3G continued to roll out, though not rapidly. Predictions at the start of the year were for EDGE, an enhancement to GSM networks that sits between 2.5G GPRS and full-blown 3G, with speeds somewhere inbetween, to be adopted widely. And by the latter half of the year, if figures by EDGE network equipment leader Nokia are anything to go by, plenty of operators are considering the '2.75G' upgrade.

But if users were generally disenchanted by the talk of lots of different Gs, the industry involved itself in more cat-fighting. It is generally panning out that GSM and upgrades from GSM will account for around three-quarters of networks worldwide, while those based on cdmaOne and its third-generation big brothers - already widely used in a number of markets - the remaining quarter.

So imagine the surprise when the chair of the GSM Association said at the ITU Telecom World event in Geneva in October that the phrase 3GSM should be used for 3G. Of course that's a world he sees as synonymous with the UMTS and W-CDMA acronyms - still with me? - but not CDMA20001x, EV-DO and EV-DV, in short, Qualcomm's standards.

But if that was a war of terminology, the very real conflict in Iraq saw one of the most contentious issues of the year blow up. Fresh from the ousting of Saddam Hussein's regime, a US Congressman from California - just happening to represent the area where Qualcomm is based - put in an early request that any Iraqi mobile networks be built using CDMA rather than GSM, despite GSM being a natural choice in that region.

The GSMers hit back, but not before words were exchanged. The Republican Congressman in question, Darrell Issa, decided to characterise GSM as a European standard, unfortunately. Still, it won the day with licences now awarded and Issa spent the latter half of 2003 getting Arnold Schwarzenegger elected governor of California.

One technology that has proved a hit in the US and is now spreading further afield is push-to-talk (PTT). Expect to hear about its one-to-many and walkie-talkie-style capabilities soon.

Otherwise, this was undoubtedly another big year for Wi-Fi, and private (domestic and business) local area networks based on various flavours of the 802.11 standard. It has been spreading as far as commercial aircraft, most notably through the Connexion by Boeing offering, and in-flight SMS is now also possible.

Most major cellular operators are also now backing Wi-Fi but one of the stories has been the wholesale networks that will work with front line providers. While Megabeam turned into Swisscom-Eurospot in Europe, The Cloud started to grab headlines and Cometa became perhaps the industry's biggest gamble in the US. Intel also announced one of the marketing and product coups of the year with its Centrino processor plus wireless package.

Wi-Fi will be huge but then we knew that before 2003. Who will survive to prosper from it is another, much trickier matter.

As ever, mobile and wireless proved an area of quirkiness. A quick trawl using the silicon.com search engine reveals 2003 was the year an Australian contested an alleged dismissal from work by SMS, SMS dating hit the big time in India and SMS crime fighting did likewise in Malaysia. Meanwhile Koreans showed off what they called a 'brain charger' PDA-based device at Comdex and a Norwegian MP was caught inappropriately using his PDA - mid-way through a session in parliament.

And trust the Japanese to come highlight the serious and wacky in camera phones. That country saw a clamp down on digital shoplifting - the copying of content from magazines in shops by camera-phone - and a device that supposedly translates what a dog is saying. Barking indeed.

But all that aside, it's been a 2003 where mobility in the enterprise is still proving itself. We put a statement from one prominent analyst house - that wireless connectivity is at the top of the technology To Do list - to our pool of IT heads. However, our October CIO Jury came back with a resounding No. These guys still care most about bread and butter operations, though mobile and wireless is making strides.

Other highlights that would make a round-up any other day include the banning of handheld mobiles while driving - and the strong reader reaction - the use of mobiles to track people, both loved ones and employees alike, and one-stop services from operators, aping Vodafone live!. We include O2 Active, OrangeWorld and T-Zones in that bracket.

We should be a little more confident at the end of 2003 - SMS, WAP and Java game download numbers are at a high and growing, the balance of the companies driving the industry are improving, for the main part, and there continues to be innovation at the handset, network and software application level.

So let's look forward optimistically, without necessarily pinning down - as at least one major systems integrator has done - 2004 as "the year enterprises go mobile".