The Fight for Telecom Partners on Wireless

Mobile phone users access data services through their phone carriers. The carriers therefore control prime real estate: the screen on their customers’ phones. Given the small screen and the typical keypad, which makes typing a URL unwieldy, a prominent position on the initial screen is even more valuable than such positioning on a PC browser’s homepage. Partnerships with telecommunications carriers are therefore essential to success in this market.

At Wireless 2000 in New Orleans, LA, in February, Microsoft announced deals with AirTouch and Nextel. Both carriers are launching wireless portals that will offer MSN Mobile to their users. Microsoft is leaving it to the carriers to decide how they will charge users.

Microsoft’s competitors include Yahoo, which has bought conspicuous placement on the initial screen of Sprint PCS’s Wireless Web service (position 2, below Sprint PCS–related services), and AOL. At Wireless 2000, AOL announced deals with BellSouth, Motorola, Nokia, Research in Motion (makers of the popular Blackberry pager), and Sprint PCS, although none gave a time frame for service delivery.