“Nokia, the world’s largest maker of cellular phones, is
licensing 3Com’s Palm Computing operating system to use its
interface and applications with Symbian’s platform. Symbian–a
joint venture between Britain’s Psion, Sweden’s Ericsson, Finland’s
Nokia, Motorola, and Japan’s Matsushita–is being developed to
build products around Psion’s EPOC operating system for the next
generation of smart cell phones and palm-top computers with
Internet access.
The licensing agreement with Nokia pits Palm’s wildly
popular Palm OS in yet another brawl with software giant
Microsoft, which has been trying to chip away at Palm’s
formidable lead in the handheld-computing devices market with
its Windows CE.”
“Nokia said it would contribute the key wireless technologies,
including wireless voice communications and telephony applications,
new emerging data protocols, and IP-based wireless access to
enterprise applications.
The jointly developed devices will support Palm’s proprietary
Web-clipping technology as well as the Web Application Protocol
(WAP), two technologies for optimizing Internet content for devices
with small screens, like cell phones and handheld computers.”