CANNES, France — It's a safe bet that the teaming of Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. to develop reference designs for personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smart phones will shake up the mobile telephony market. But not everyone is convinced that the two PC behemoths can make a smooth leap into the mobile world.
The two companies announced at the 3GSM World Congress here Tuesday (Feb. 19) that they will collaborate on reference designs based on Microsoft's software platforms and Intel's Personal Internet Client Architecture silicon. The alliance is intended to "jumpstart a wireless market with rich mobile devices very quickly," said Ben Waldman, vice president of the Mobility Division at Microsoft.
Handset vendors at the cell phone conference here said they were not surprised by the partnership of the two PC industry giants, but voiced skepticism that Intel and Microsoft have the expertise to pass the intricate telephony-centric tests imposed by wireless operators.
Although Intel has a great microprocessor expertise, it may struggle with telephony, said several European handset companies. Handset vendors today are using silicon that integrates onto a baseband processor such functions as an advanced multirate (AMR) codec, support for Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (Edge), and Enhanced Observed Time Differential (EOTD). To follow that course, Intel is likely to face an uphill battle against TI, which has intimate knowledge of both DSP and telephony algorithms, the handset companies said.
Sendo Ltd., one of the few handset companies developing GPRS handsets based on Microsoft's SmartPhone 2002 platform, welcomed the alliance and said it will bring more competition to baseband processors designed for handsets. To date, Texas Instruments is the only company offering a silicon solution for Microsoft's SmartPhone 2002 platform.
Ron Schaeffer, head of product strategy and planning at Sendo, said his company has been talking to Intel for some time. "For the next-generation products, we are looking at everything available on the market," he said. Noting that Sendo currently uses TI's baseband processor across its product line, Schaeffer added, "We have a very good relationship with TI right now."
Neither Intel nor Microsoft disclosed when their smart phone reference design will be ready. The companies' reference designs will be focused "not on SmartPhone 2002, but on the next-generation platform," according to Tony Sica, director of marketing at Intel's Wireless Communications and Computing Group (Folsom, Calif.).
While the Intel-Microsoft mobile alliance seeks to emulate the evolution of the PC market by opening up the platform to speed development of wireless devices and applications, the relationship is not expected to be exclusive. Intel had previously formed alliances related to smart phones and PDAs with Symbian and Palm. Similarly, Microsoft turned to TI when it needed a chip vendor and reference design collaborator for its SmartPhone 2002.
