British Telecommunications' former mobile arm mm02 will be the
first to offer customers Microsoft's Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition
PDA.
The PDA comes with with a high-resolution color touch screen comes
with built-in combined GSM and GPRS technology or Code Division
Multiple Access (CDMA)-based 1XRTT, said Magnus Ahlberg,
Microsoft's mobile marketing manager EMEA (Europe, the Middle East
and Africa) at the 3GSM congress in Cannes.
"The Pocket PCs will make it to the market in Europe first with the
mmO2 device and the HP device available by the second quarter.
There will also in the future be other versions of the Wireless
Pocket PC from other carriers, including Orange," Ahlberg
said.
Unlike the Smartphone, the Pocket PCs include such applications as
Pocket Word and Pocket Excel. Pocket PCs can be used as a mobile
phone, being held directly to the ear, the device comes with a
small built-in speakerphone and Microsoft is also selling headsets
as well as smaller Bluetooth attachments that fit into the user's
ear.
Along with its XDA, mmO2 will by the second quarter distribute the
combined mobile phone-PDA Handspring Treo for use on its GSM
networks in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the UK. By the
end of the year, mmO2 will bring out a software upgrade allowing
the Treo to run over GPRS mobile data networks as well. The Treo
runs on Palm's Palm OS.
"O2 is trying to cover each segment of the business market," said
IDC's Pescatore. "So O2 has plans to sell a branded version of
Handspring, Pocket PC and Palm as well. But what Microsoft, and to
a somewhat lesser extent O2, is banking on is that people will feel
more comfortable using the XDA because it most resembles the
experience they have on their PC," said Pescatore, analyst at
IDC.
The operating system for Microsoft's Smartphone is based on its
Stinger software. "In terms of competition, I'd say that Symbian is
our primary competitor," Ahlberg said. The Epoc-based operating
system from Symbian is an open software platform that is co-owned
by Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola and has been licensed by, among
others, Fujitsu and Sanyo.
Pescatore sees Symbian as leading the way in the smart phone
market. "Symbian has the advantage at the moment, but things are
also changing in this area, as the smart phone moves into becoming
a multimedia device that will have voice capabilities, as opposed
to the other way around. I think MMS [Multimedia Messaging Service]
will be big and it will be the application that really starts
GPRS," Pescatore said.