SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Hardware and software players are
positioning themselves to combine two of the Internet’s success stories —
Wi-Fi
hardware platform.
Literally every OEM is working on some type of WLAN phone, according to
IDC. A 2003 report from the analyst firm shows that VoIP endpoints have 10
percent market share of the total handset market and that soft phones are
the fastest growing category.
But the major driver behind the scenes appears to be Microsoft, “Our role in this is as an enabler. We are a catalyst for VoIP with Windows The NEC partnership means the Japanese electronics manufacturer will “The device uses a separate digital signal baseband to get to the NEC said the combination of Wi-Fi and VoIP on a device will let Microsoft has also been hard at work revising its middleware technologies “Across the board, customers ask ‘help me to be more efficient’,” John And beyond the traditional PC, PDA and smartphone, Horn said, Microsoft Overall, Microsoft said its deals with NEC and Vonage are typical of the Starkweather said Vonage plans on launching its Wi-Fi/VoIP phones later which revealed development deals this week with NEC Infrontia
and Intel
as well as broadband
phone provider Vonage.
Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft is touting its windows
CE OS as a platform that could potentially turn every IP device into a
phone. Earlier this week, the company released a beta of version 5.0 of its Windows CE operating system.
CE, our Windows Live Communication Server and presence solutions with
network equipment providers,” said Microsoft Embedded Devices Group Director
Scott Horn to attendees at the Spring 2004 Voice on the Net (VON) Trade
Show & Expo here. In all, Microsoft announced 22 additional voice partners
including NEC, Vonage, LG Electronics, Reddline Systems, and Atrium C&I Co.
offer its wireless IP phones running Microsoft’s Windows CE
operating system on a new Intel XScale processor code named Bulverde. The IP
phones are expected to let enterprise customers tap into local wireless
local area networks (WLAN). NEC Infrontia said it has been cooperating with
Microsoft for two years to deliver IT communication systems and terminals
across various markets and the phones are expected to work with a
corporation’s existing IT infrastructure.
Intel spokesperson Mark Miller
said its processor will only power the data processing and not for
connecting to hotspots.
network, Miller told internetnews.com. “Our combination networking
and processing chip is code-named ‘Hermone’ and was recently announced at
the 3G conference in Cannes. The cell phone chip combines data processing
with access to wideband CDMA networks.
subscribers take advantage of Microsoft’s various platforms such as instant
messaging, alerts and multimedia services. No release date was given for the
new devices.
in Windows CE that it developed for the telecom stack and put it in the
source form. The company is providing more than 2 million lines of source
code to help developers bring VoIP products to market faster.
Starkweather, group product manager for Microsoft’s Windows embedded group
told internetnews.com. “We’re close to desktop parity. We’ve made
improvements to the tool set and we also are shipping in the product a new
thing for us. Beyond the 250 sample drivers, we now have 50 production
quality drivers. They’re optimized for the major chip we support. We’ve got
50 drivers ready to go. There’s a wide range of devices on CE, we couldn’t
possibly do the millions of potentials, but we did the major ones in the
major categories.”
is also looking at traditional set top boxes and media gateways becoming
opportunities for VoIP.
three types of partners it is approaching. The first is the OEM/ODM partner,
which Microsoft says are VoIP horizontals that can play on any device.
Companies under this category include traditional partners like Intel as
well as this year’s additions like LG Electronics, NEC, and Redline. Then
there are system integrators such as Data Craft, which produces an array of
applications for telephony systems. And the third sector Microsoft is
approaching is service operators.
this year. He also added that the Edison, N.J.-based broadband phone
provider also worked with Microsoft to tune its device to the latest
versions of Windows CE.
