[3g-g]

And we all thought the Orange incarnation was a bind for us "original handset OS lovers", it seems that Vodafone is heading that way too. I also know that Orange has lined up a big partnership with Microsoft as well as striking a deal with Nokia for customised operating systems. I understand there's a need to standardise things to make it easier to develop one system that can talk to 2 or 3 handset types rather than multi OSs and multi systems, but are we that unable to work a few different devices?! God help us all!


Vodafone unveiled plans on Monday to become the first mobile operator to standardise the software on its handsets, striking a deal with Microsoft and saying it will work with just two other software providers.

Vodafone said it planned to slash the number of operating systems it would develop applications for in the next five years to just three, supporting just Microsoft Windows Mobile, Symbian/S60 and Linux in the future.

With little standardisation in the mobile software world, applications such as e-mail, instant messaging and music players currently have to be written in an array of different software languages to enable them to work on different handsets.

The duplication of the software writers' work makes developing new applications costly and time consuming for operators.

Microsoft Mobile and Embedded Devices senior vice president Pieter Knook told Reuters other operators were planning similar reductions in scale.

"Vodafone is the first to go into this direction, but there are others doing similar things and we will be talking about them in due course," Knook said in a telephone interview.

Vodafone gave no financial details of the deal but said it hoped the move would speed up and streamline the development of new applications as well as leading to convergence between mobile devices and computers.

"By focusing on these three core terminal platforms, Vodafone expects to be able to reap the benefits of a range of efficiencies such as reduced handset development costs, as well as the quicker and more cost effective roll out of new services," said Jens Schulte-Bockum, Vodafone's head of terminals.

"This initiative aims to ensure that we do not have to create a different set of software to provide services on a wide range of platforms," he added.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/phones--pdas/vodafone-to-standardise-mobile-phone-software/2006/11/08/1162661735950.html

[Hands0n]

It all rather makes sense to me, although the loss of diversity may be somewhat stifling to development of new ideas. The standardisation to three general purpose operating systems should pay big dividends to the mobile operators in terms of development and support costs. It is an inevitable evolution in handsets, probably way overdue really.

[Ben]

Yeah, I think the move to work with just a select few operating systems makes one hell of a lot of sense. In the computer world we have enough problems developing applications that work across the small pool of OS's available, so it's hardly surprising that creating mobile phone applications has, until now, remained something of a niche.

Of course that's where Java should really stand proud, allowing applications to be written that work across a broad range of handsets, but unfortunately, while Java support on mobiles is OK, it never really got good enough to support complex programs.

How Vodafone decides to 'customise' the OSs of its selected partners, however, is another thing altogether, and I certainly hope customers aren't left quite literally seeing red.