Intel, TI Push Smartphone

Intel and Texas Instruments (TI) will produce reference platforms for “smart” cell phones that combine their chip sets with Microsoft’s Smartphone 2002 software. The deals could reduce the development and production costs of phones based on the software, which integrates the Windows CE 3.0 operating system and personal digital assistant (PDA) applications with cell phone technologies that use next-generation wireless voice and data networks. These deals could also give the software a better chance of attracting one of the three top cell phone vendors, who have spurned it thus far.

TI Ready, Intel to Come

Similar in functionality to the Pocket PC Phone Edition, Smartphone 2002 is designed to run on smaller cell-phone-sized devices that do not use touch screens. (For more information on PPC 2002 Phone Edition, see “Pocket PC 2002 Manufacturers and Devices“.) The TI and Intel platforms will both incorporate this software, but in different ways.

Texas Instruments. The TI design is already available and is based on the TCS2500 Open Multimedia Applications Platform (OMAP) chip set. Because the chip set includes a GMS/GPRS radio, it will not be applicable to phones targeted at the emerging North American “CDMA2000 1XRTT” packet networks, such as Verizon’s new Express Network service or Sprint’s Clear Wireless Workplace service, due in mid-2002. (For more on wireless networks, see “Wireless Connectivity Options for the Pocket PC“.)