Microsoft reaches major milestone, clever strategy

[Andy Sjostrom]

<a href="http://www.microsoftmobilitypress.com/site/home/main.asp">http://www.microsoftmobilitypress.com/site/home/main.asp</a><br /><br />I'd like to add some exciting news to Ed's post on the Pocket PC Phone Edition. I recently learned that the US carrier Cingular today announces plans to bring Smartphone 2002 phones from Sendo, the Z100, to their network. This means that Cingular is the first carrier to bring Smartphone 2002s to the US.<br /><br />While this is a major milestone, I am convinced that this is just that. More carriers will follow, and I would not be surprised if we soon even see carrier branded Smartphone 2002s as well as carrier branded Pocket PC Phone Edition devices, the O2 XDA being the first. To partner with mobile network operators is a very clever strategy from many perspectives. But that's worth a post of its own...! Now, let's just celebrate the Cingular announcement!

[entropy1980]

Glad I switched to Cingular! Looks like I will be ditching my Nokia 8290 for Sendo! Can't hardly wait hope it's sooner rather than later! any Idea on a date?

[orinoco]

Hello:

Do you know if this is Cingular GSM or Cingular TDMA ?

Thanks,

Fernando

[Andy Sjostrom]

On date: all I know is "later this year".
On network: I don't know. Anyone else?

[entropy1980]

Cingular Is GSM from what I understand there would be no reason to be on TDMA, it will probably have GPRS support too.

[mel]

I dunno, maybe its just me, but I would never do business with Cingular. Their customer service is one of the worst I've seen among any product I use, let alone cellphones. After my horrible experience with their support and useless website, I'm never going to try anything from them again, regardless of whether they're first in a particular market.

[JMountford]

Orinoco,
The Sendo Smartphone is for GSM and I think GPRS. It will not work on TDMA. I can tell you that I have read from various sources that Cingular is trying to Phase GSM into their TDMA network and thereby ditch TDMA completely. I am sorry I forget the time table for this but you should be able to find out from a Cingular Rep. (at least hopefully, that is if what I have heard about Cingular reps intelligence is not true.).

Good Luck.

[dochall]

I don't really think this is much of a news item although I am sure Microsoft are using it for all it's worth.

So a single carrier has agreed to over a handset from a new supplier. Wooohee!

It still does not hide the fact the MS have failed to persuade any of the established players (Nokia, Sony E, etc) to take the OS. Now that would be newsworthy.

[Jeff Kirvin]

I don't really think this is much of a news item although I am sure Microsoft are using it for all it's worth.

So a single carrier has agreed to over a handset from a new supplier. Wooohee!

It still does not hide the fact the MS have failed to persuade any of the established players (Nokia, Sony E, etc) to take the OS. Now that would be newsworthy.


In the cell phone market, it's the carriers that call the shots, not the manufacturers. If Cingular, Voicestream and Verizon all start carrying Smartphone 2002 devices, the makers of those units could become "established players" overnight. Assuming the carriers subsidize them so the consumer up front price is right, I can see a lot of American consumers picking SP2002 models over whatever Nokia or Ericsson is pushing.