Nokia forges Europe’s mobile future, threatens the silicon boy wonders

1999-12-07

Nokia became Europe’s most valuable company yesterday, as its net worth pipped BP Amoco at the post. Not bad for a Nordic TV manufacturer. Almost as staggering is its prediction that cellular subscribers will triple to one billion over the next three years, based on the adoption of the cellular Internet, where mobile phone users access Internet services through the Wireless Application Protocol WAP.

In case it wasn’t recognised already, Nokia looks fixed to be setting a number of standards, not only for mobile phones but also for PDAs and ultimately for computing devices. Why? Because they are all part of the same infrastructure. This is why Nokia is so fascinating. Consider:

- With Ericsson and Motorola, Nokia has brought WAP to market without a glitch, to the demise of 3Com’s WebClipping and Microsoft’s MicroBrowser technology

- With Palm and Symbian, Nokia has settled on the next generation of OS for its devices, sidelining Windows CE and giving both Palm and Symbian every reason to be cheerful

- Again with Ericsson and others, Nokia has been instrumental to the success of Bluetooth which (despite teething problems – no pun intended) looks set to bypass other wireless local networking protocols, for example from the likes of Apple.

Just as information is power, so it is that in the information industry, he who sets the standards rules the world. While the gorillas of the IT industry have been fighting trench warfare in the standards game, the mobile manufacturers have been co-ordinating their efforts in far more gentlemanly co-opetition. These companies are fast becoming some of the most powerful in the world and their size, and their ability to co-ordinate efforts, gives them the potential to trounce the bickering upstarts of the silicon age. As the worlds of IT and communications continue to converge, the next standards battles will give the IT incumbents such as Microsoft, SUN and Oracle a true run for their money.

(First published 7 December 1999)