Microsoft operating system supports GSM on PDAs

By
EE Times
(02/19/02, 02:40:58 PM EDT)

CANNES, France Continuing its quest to mold profitable enterprises onto its personal-computer template, Microsoft Corp. this week is unveiling an operating system that supports telephony features on handheld computing platforms.

The PocketPC 2002 Phone Edition is a PDA operating system based on Windows CE 3.0, said Marcus Perryman, senior application development consultant at Microsoft. The OS will debut at the 3GSM World Congress here.

Microsoft has drafted a two-pronged strategy to attack the smart-phone market. The PocketPC Phone Edition equips PDAs for phone functionality, while the Stinger is a smart phone platform that enables PDA functions. The Stinger, already used in mobile phones from Sendo and others, is based on a customized PocketPC 2002 core, said Perryman.

The key difference between the two resides in the user interface, Perryman said. The PocketPC Phone Edition lets users navigate through a bigger screen with touch functions and handwriting recognition. The Stinger allows operation via soft keys on a mobile phone.

The PocketPC 2002 Phone Edition has the "pedigree of a PC," with specialized Win32 API support, while providing rich PDA applications closely linked to phones, Perryman said. To build phone enhancements into the operating system and improve key Win32 APIs to support digital cellular, Microsoft added a separate "cell core" composed of software blocks supporting Short Message Service, Subscriber Identity Module and Wireless Application Protocol functionality, together with the telephony API (TAPI) and extended TAPI.

Microsoft has just released a PocketPC 2002 software development kit on its Web site that includes phone documentation, according to Perryman. On the 3GSM show floor today, demonstrations will be up and running on Hewlett-Packard's PDA.