Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Vodafone move to standardise handset software

The Daily Mail City&Finance Page 68 (Tuesday, November 7, 2006) ran a short piece on Vodafone unveiling "plans to become the first mobile operator to standardise the software of its handsets". It is to "slash the number of operating systems it would develop applications for in the next five years". This will reduce to three, that of Microsoft Windows Mobile, Symbian/S60 and Linux.

The three choices Vodafone have made are not bad, but there is always the worry from end-users point of view that they end up with largely a fait accompli, that of limited choices dished up by an operator.

It will be interesting to see whether the handset manufacturers follow suit and downsize their operating systems to comply with Vodafone's plans

Alternatively, the likes of Nokia, Motorola, SonyEricsson, Samsung etc could create mobile 'phones with the appropriate GSM/GPRS/WCDMA/WiFi wireless operating systems on them and allow the general public to profile their handsets with the application features (download) they not only like, but actually want.

No comments: