Vodafone Picks Microsoft as 3rd Phone Platform

Vodafone Group has picked Microsoft’s Windows Mobile as the third operating system it will offer in its line of mobile phones, it said Monday.

Windows Mobile joins Symbian’s operating system and Linux, which Vodafone has already said will also drive its phones for the next five years.

Vodafone announced earlier this year that it would whittle down the number of operating systems it supports from more than 15 to two or three. By supporting just a few software platforms, Vodafone can cut application development costs and also offer more services to end users, it said. The company didn’t have many other open operating system platforms to choose from, beyond Symbian OS, Windows Mobile and Linux. The operating system formerly known as Palm OS, bought by Access, is now based on Linux. Vodafone also sells BlackBerry devices, which run software from the device’s creator, Research In Motion.

“The advantages of having these centralized platforms is it’s a lot easier to roll out applications and services so users get a bigger selection of services,” said Mark Street, a Vodafone spokesman.

Most mobile phone makers use their own proprietary software to run handsets, particularly the lower-end devices. Those operating systems typically have been adjusted and modified over the years, making it increasingly difficult for operators or handset makers to add new services to them. The operating systems from Symbian and Microsoft were built to accommodate the addition of new applications, and their creators encourage third-party developers to build applications for the platforms.

While Vodafone has initiated this strategy of standardizing on the three platforms, it won’t necessarily exclude all others, Street said. Software from Symbian and Microsoft in particular tends to run on high-end smart phones, so other software might appear on the low-end phones that Vodafone offers.

But Vodafone hopes that some of the high-end operating systems will in the future work down into the mass-market phones. “At the moment, Microsoft is centered on the smart phone business end, but I think there will come a time when consumer phones will be part of the Microsoft offering as well,” he said.

Vodafone chose Symbian and Microsoft in part because they have large existing communities of developers creating applications on the platforms. The mobile Linux developer community is also growing.

-Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service (Dublin Bureau)