Mobiles go mainstream
p2pnet.net News:- Cannes is coming up again. But this time, it’s not for movies – well, not for those kinds of movies.
Next week, the mobile communications industry will be there, "buoyed by hopes that wireless pictures, music, even small-screen television, is primed to go mainstream," as a Reuters report states it here, going on:
"This year marks the true test for long-delayed 3G services in Europe, four years after operators wrecked their balance sheets by paying more than 100 billion euros ($127 billion) for new high-speed, third-generation (3G) mobile licenses in 2000.
"Mobile phone operators at next week’s 3GSM World Congress in southern France are scouting for new ideas, such as improved photo printing from camera phones and simplified services for business users, to help lure consumers."
But – first there must be phones and, "Analysts are worried there will not be enough quality video, picture and Internet data phones available for the mass market before early 2005."
Japan and Korea have been selling 3G services for two to three years but only Hutchison Whampoa and Telekom Austria have launched the services in Europe, Reuters says
And the US lags even further behind.
"Following a stellar Christmas for phone sales and the recent high-priced bidding war for No. 3 U.S. mobile operator AT&T Wireless, this year’s 3GSM World Congress should offer further evidence that the $414 billion industry has turned the corner after a nearly three-year slowdown," the report says, pointing out that underlying debates over software and computer chip standards must be solved if the world’s top consumer electronics market wants to grow beyond the 500 million phones sold last year to the industry’s 1.2 billion mobile subscribers.
"A big software battle is being fought between open source Linux, Nokia-controlled Symbian and Microsoft, all aiming to be the operating system of choice for smartphones that manage these advanced data services" and, "I think there will not be one operating system dominating. There will be two. Which two, that needs to be determined," Siemens’s mobile chief Rudi Lamprecht is quoted as saying.
