SYMBIAN - La belle EPOC

With Nokia and Ericsson on board, Symbian, the Psion venture to market its EPOC32 as an open standard, appears to have a future. But is it a confident move or one born out of terror of Windows CE?

While the cream of the UK's comms industry was attending Networksarket its EPOC32 as an open standard, appears to have a future. But is it a confident move or one born out of terror of Windows CE? Telecom at the NEC this summer, Psion dropped a small bombshell back in London by announcing what could very possibly be the alliance of the decade.

Psion has joined forces with Nokia, Ericsson and, possibly, Motorola, to form the Symbian venture. Its aim? To market Psion's EPOC32 operating system as the basis for a whole new breed of intelligent mobile phones.

Cynics have already suggested Symbian is purely a pre-emptive strike by handset manufacturers to keep Microsoft out of yet another niche market.

Others view it as a last ditch attempt by Psion to preserve its independence against the onslaught of Windows CE handheld computers. Those in a third camp see the move as an effort on behalf of the telecoms giants to try to kick-start a sector of the mobile market which to date has shown little signs of success.

The original deal, struck in June, was that Nokia and Ericsson would each take a 30 per cent stake in Symbian, while Psion would hold 40 per cent. Motorola has subsequently signed a memorandum of understanding which outlines its intention to acquire a 23 per cent interest in the venture.

This would result in the other members of the alliance re-adjusting their respective stakes.

The group says Symbian's purpose is to make EPOC32 an open standard for portable communication devices. But there is a catch - it intends to ask manufacturers to pay a licence fee of about $10 for a datacentric device using the technology, or $5 for a voice-only product.

In reality, there were already two main EPOC licensees before Symbian arrived on the scene. One is Philips, which licenses the technology for its Illium Accent data add-on for its GSM handsets, the other is Cambridge PDA manufacturer Geofox. Intriguingly, not only has Symbian cut Philips out of the joint venture equation, it has also snubbed AT&T Lucent, which runs a project with Philips to produce Illium handsets.

Former Tadpole Technology chief executive George Grey, who heads Geofox, says of the venture: 'It validates our choice of EPOC which we selected chiefly because it's easier to use than CE. Before Symbian, Psion had a potential credibility problem because despite the fact that it held the lion's share of the PDA market, Windows CE was considered the dominant player.' Grey sees Symbian as the key figure at the comms end of the PDA market, leaving Microsoft to attack the applications end.

According to John Davison, principal consultant at market research company Ovum, the reality may not be so clear-cut. 'Microsoft's long-term aim must be to play in that market,' he says. 'Siemens Nixdorf, for example, has previously announced that it intends to base its third generation products on Windows CE.'

The central comms players will at least be granted a stay of execution.

Although vendors such as Siemens, Philips, Panasonic and Samsung have market share in the global mobile handset sector, they are dwarfed by the big three - Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola.

The consensus is that Symbian has carved out its own patch, leaving Microsoft to play on its own. Mike Welbrock, operations director at portable specialist distributor PPCP, does not believe Symbian will have a massive impact on CE sales. 'Windows CE is for computers, not for smartphones. There is some crossover but it probably won't hurt CE palmtop sales.'

Welbrock points out that the Symbian deal does not exclude handset manufacturers from following parallel routes. 'There are no products out there yet and companies such as Ericsson have said they're still developing existing CE devices, so we've yet to see what will really happen.'

Craig Swallow, business unit manager at mobile comms distributor Hugh Symons, shares this view. 'I don't think CE will have an impact, simply because the aim of Symbian is to attack a sector that doesn't exist right now,' he says.

According to Swallow, CE cannot be used as the OS for smartphones because, unlike EPOC, it doesn't possess the power, speed or real-time processing capabilities for the job. 'At present, smartphones such as the Communicator use two processors whereas Symbian only requires one.'

Pekka Ala-Pietila, president of Nokia, is optimistic about Symbian's prospects. At its launch, he said: 'As an uncompromised application platform, EPOC forms a reliable and innovative path to the next generation of mobile communications devices.'

Traver Kennedy, director of advanced business development at comms software vendor Citrix Systems, says if the mobile handset business follows the same pattern as the desktop PC industry, the bottom will drop out of the handset hardware business and the only real money will be made by software giants. He adds: 'The alliance doesn't want to see all its revenues going back to Redmond.'

Ovum's Davison says: 'Psion was looking at ways to build GSM into its handsets, but Symbian is a meeting of minds. By the year 2000, there will be packet data services available in some format on all the main wireless networks worldwide, not just GSM. The radio side of the equation is no real problem. What matters will be how these devices handle applications and content.' This is exactly where he expects Symbian to score - by providing the core operating system to allow third parties to write their applications.

The Symbian alliance is built out of necessity rather than choice, according to Davison: 'They are all fiercely competitive, but they have also recognised what a sad tale the story of mobile data is.'

And what about a killer application for Symbian? Davison doesn't think mobile video conferencing will provide it: 'The answer will be something more like the provision of personalised content along the lines of what AT&T is attempting to do Stateside with its PocketNet product.'

This niche market is, in fact, so innovative that a term for the next generation of portable information devices that Symbian will create has yet to be coined. According to Davison, even the word smartphones doesn't really fit the part. 'It'll be more than just telephones,' he says. 'The technology will be used to provide wireless connectivity for a range of devices such as digital cameras.' He also shies away from defining the breed as Web phones or Web-enabled handsets because, while they provide internet access, they will also be used for other forms of mobile data such as short text messages (SMS).

This leaves the question of whether Symbian is saving Psion's bacon in an increasingly crowded market. 'It's a big boost for the company - the share price has rocketed,' says PPCP's Welbrock. 'It will also help Psion by diversifying its business outside the handheld market, where the competition from the PalmPilot and CE machines is getting intense.'

Ovum's Davison agrees. 'Psion has certainly done well to preserve its independence but Symbian is an altogether much bigger thing.' And according to Welbrock: 'Obviously the mobile companies could have just licensed EPOC from Psion, so Symbian means they are trying to take a share of the market.'

But there is the question of how Symbian fits in with other industry initiatives such as Bluetooth, the mobile interface standard pushed by Motorola, Ericsson and Nokia in conjunction with Intel and IBM. 'Symbian will be developing EPOC to accommodate the Bluetooth radio comms protocol and other wireless standards,' says Welbrock. 'Symbian is more of an umbrella for technology than a direct rival for individual protocols.'

The burning question is, why would anyone need to be Symbian-compliant to browse the Web from their handsets in the first place? Citrix's Kennedy, a firm backer of 'personal information devices', describes developing mobile communication and computing hybrids as 'Minitels (the French viewdata terminals) on steroids'. He believes there will be plenty of generalist information services, hosted on the internet, to which everyone will want access via Symbian.

He cites the example of online banking, where people will be able to pay bills, check current account balances and pay off credit cards all via their Symbian phone.

Kennedy reveals that ICA, the Citrix protocol for delivering thin client services, was designed to work at 9.6Kbps, the GSM base data rate, adding: 'The largest thin client installed base is telephone handsets.'

Most people agree Symbian is a way to initiate change as well as a defensive measure on the part of all four participants. Kennedy says: 'Previously, all the participants were following the same path. This way, everybody is working together to exploit the opportunity.' He adds that Symbian has great significance because it brings the technical gurus of the twin worlds of telephony together: 'At last, you have the pole climbers and data heads talking to each other.'

Industry bigwigs are upbeat about the project. 'I think it will be good for the mobile datacomms sector as a whole,' says Welbrock. 'If these four manufacturers are pushing the technology and developing a standard, it raises overall awareness of the subject and builds confidence with customers.'

Industry observers will be watching Symbian very closely. For while the joint venture has definitely stolen the limelight for the time being, it has by no means cornered the entire smart phone market. As Ovum's Davison says: 'These are interesting times.'

WHAT IS SYMBIAN?

Symbian is an attempt to establish a standard in the emerging market for smartphones, currently epitomised by products such as Nokia's Communicator 9000 and Samsung's SensPalm. Both are hybrid PDAs and mobile phones, the former based on Geo-Works software and the latter using Windows CE.

Psion's EPOC is a full 32-bit operating system that combined with low-power RISC chips such as ARM's StrongARM, makes an ideal hardware platform for a breed of devices that will be half portable phone, half handheld computer.

It's becoming obvious that Symbian can embrace all the other emerging standards for mobile datacomms. For example, it has signed up to support Bluetooth, an interface standard for synchronising data held on two portable devices such as a laptop and a portable phone (PC Dealer, 2 September).

Symbian will almost certainly run WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), a standard that enables portable computers to access the internet seamlessly.

Expect Symbian devices to be running Unwired Planet's WAP-compliant browser, talking to WAP-compliant Web servers that forward compressed data to mobile phones.

It's feasible for Symbian devices to run Java applets too. Nortel has shown its Java-based smartphone, the Orbitor. And if Symbian signs up for Citrix's ICA protocol, as Psion has, then smartphones could become remote Windows terminals too. By taking over Psion Software's offices, Symbian has gained outlets in Kanazawa, Japan and San Francisco, from where it can build support.