Jul 10, 2002 Matsushita, Nokia call on phone software
Nokia said on Wednesday Japanese rival Matsushita will buy its software for smartphones that send e-mails, pictures and play games, boosting the world's largest handset maker's position in software.
The deal is another victory for Nokia as it moves beyond handset manufacture into software design. In May it signed up Germany's Siemens to buy its mobile software. It also deals a blow to Microsoft's ambitions to crack the software market for mobile phones. Nokia gave no financial details of the agreement. --Reuters
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Matsushita to License Nokia Phone Software
Wed Jul 10, 4:07 AM ET
By Paul de Bendern
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia ( news - web sites) said on Wednesday Japanese rival Matsushita will buy its software for smartphones that send e-mails, pictures and play games, boosting the world's largest handset maker's position in software.
The deal is another victory for Nokia as it moves beyond handset manufacture into software design. In May it signed up Germany's Siemens to buy its mobile software.
It also deals a blow to Microsoft's ambitions to crack the software market for mobile phones.
Nokia gave no financial details of the agreement.
Nokia saw its shares fall two percent to 14.58 euros in early trade, tracking weaker European markets.
Handsets makers are increasingly cooperating or buying each other's technology to cut costs and boost profits in an industry which is experiencing its second year of declining sales.
The wireless industry is moving from second generation voice networks to third generation data networks, and this requires heavy investments, which smaller manufacturers cannot afford.
Matsushita Communication Industrial (MCI), owner of the Panasonic brand, will use Nokia's Series 60 Platform software in its multimedia phones, running on the Symbian operating system.
"We expect to contribute significantly to the expansion of global mobile services market through the use of the Series 60 software platform in our Panasonic mobile phones," Matsushita Chief Technical Officer Osamu Waki said in a statement.
SYMBIAN DE FACTO STANDARD
Symbian OS is the basic operating system that is becoming the de facto standard for the world's leading mobile phone makers after struggling to gain ground last year. Nokia's software adds to Symbian's in that it offers the software applications that are visible to consumers, like e-mail, games and messaging programs.
Nokia and Matushita both have stakes in British mobile phone software maker Symbian. U.S. Microsoft has a competing system, which offers both the operating system and a set of software applications, but has not found a major phone maker to use it.
Nokia has been campaigning hard to establish itself as not only the leading provider of mobile phones, but also of software that runs on phones and which other phone makers can license.
Nokia says it is pushing for an open standard to ensure handsets work seamlessly with each other, but some analysts question Nokia's motives, saying it wants to dominate the wireless world.
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