Petteri Pyyny
13 Feb 2002 13:41
Apple, Ericsson and Sun announced today that they're joining forces in order to develop a new standard for video streaming in mobile phones. New standard would be based on ISO-specified MPEG-4 format and would use Apple's QuickTime as a "wrapper" format for the video.
Parties have their own areas of expertise that they hope to join efficiently; Ericsson has the wireless infrastructure knowledge, Apple has the content and encoding technology and Sun has the content delivery mechanism.
Alliance has one major problem -- are they going to succeed in creating a new standard without Nokia, the biggest mobile phone company in the world? And companies also aim to use the standards in PDAs and "communicators" (as tightly integrated mobile phone/PDA hybrids, like Nokia 9210, are called) -- Ericsson is one of the main owners of Symbian, the operating system that will be used in all major manufacturers' 3G cell phones, but does that guarantee that Symbian will pick the standard for its platform? We'll see..