Motorola
has promised to include Internet browsing capabilities on
all its mobile phones in the year 2000.
The statement came
on the opening day of the CeBIT exhibition in Germany and
coincided with Motorola’s introduction of a new range of
personal communication products.
Frank Lloyd, president of Motorola’s Personal
Communications Sector for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA),
said that Motorola’s whole range of digital phones would be
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) compliant as soon as the
interoperability standards for the protocol have been agreed.
“This means that consumers can expect to see
the first Internet-browsing capabilities appearing on a Motorola
GSM phone by the end of the year, and across our entire digital
phone range in 2000,” he said.
Motorola is joining with Ericsson and Nokia in a joint
marketing initiative aimed at making the mobile Internet
easier to promote. It is being called Mobile Media Mode, and will use a universal icon that identifies mobile devices
and Internet content that are designed to work together.
Mobile phones will not, of course, be able to display all
the advanced layouts that are now seen on the World Wide Web.
The announcement follows others earlier this year which
indicated the trend. Motorola announced a $50 million contract
with Cellnet on February 9 to deliver GPRS (General Packet
Radio Service) capability across its GSM network. This
facilitates applications such as Internet-browsing and mobile
e-commerce.
Also in February, Motorola announced a $1 billion alliance with
Cisco Systems to create an open wireless, digital communications
infrastructure, based on the Internet protocol.
At this week’s CeBIT, Motorola showed its latest products, which
included the world’s smallest and lightest dual-band GSM mobile phone
and the world’s first tri-band GSM phone.