The 3GSM in Cannes has started today, and as some predicted it, it’s going to be full of interesting products and news. I will myself go there and post about it (although with my move to Estonia/Finland coming, it’s not like I have lot of time).

Two announcements made me especially happy as they show that the user might have something to say again in this industry. First Microsoft announced a partnership with Flextronics to build a reference design running Windows Mobile. Microsoft has been artificially excluded from the wireless world, because of the fear operators and manufacturers have Microsoft would do the same to the wireless world as they did to the PC world. This fear is justified, but it doesn’t mean Microsoft doesn’t have good products, and that people shouldn’t be allowed to buy them.

Second news is Motorola and Skype signing a memorandum of understanding to have some Motorola Wifi or 3G phones pre-loaded with Skype in the future. This isn’t going to please the operators, as it will allow users to make free Skype calls instead of using their calling plans. I’m actually surprised that Motorola has the courage for such a move. We will have to wait to see the actual phones - it’s not going to be easy to build such a phone.

The tendency lately had been operators taking more and more control and dictating to the manufacturers the features to put in phones or how the menus should be laid out. I don’t believe this is going to change, but it’s nice to see that some companies still resist.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 14th, 2005 at 6:18 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Linking Blogs