The announcement by US server manufacturer Hewlett-Packard Co and Finnish mobile heavyweight Nokia Oyj of a joint assault on the wireless application protocol (WAP) market may bode well for Symbian and ill for Windows CE.
For the time being the two are speaking only of an alliance in which Nokia’s WAP server is to become available on HP’s Unix and NY boxes (see separatestory). However, HP makes no secret of its ambitions in the e-commerce market, or e-services as it prefers to brand then, and the tie-up with the Finnish telecoms equipment manufacturer positions the Palo Alto-based server vendor for a further push into the mobile end of that segment.
In the palmtop arena, HP is committed to Microsoft’s Window CE operating system, but the company also wants to penetrate the market for embedded systems with its Chai appliance platform, a Java-based rival to Sun Microsystems’ own Virtual Machines.
Now, as Ulf Beyschlag, director and worldwide product manager for mobile e-services at HP, pointed out that Windows CE doesn’t have the footprint for embedded devices, making that operating system not an option on which to run Chai. The EPOC operating system from Symbian Plc, the UK-based consortium of which Nokia is a member, is therefore an interesting option in this context, he said.
One thing is clear. HP does not share Sun’s view of an increasing amount of intelligence on the network itself, being accessed by a proliferation of ever thinner clients. We think the handheld will become more of a computer environment in itself, rather than a remote client, Beyschlag predicted. And with more devices, such as automobiles, refrigerators and microwave ovens getting their own URL from now on, Chai on Epoc may be HP’s route into that market, he hinted, even though its palmtops will continue to run CE.
