Vodafone, Microsoft in deal for mobile software

LONDON/AMSTERDAM:  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.

(C) Reuters