Ericsson, Microsoft Form Wireless Venture

Microsoft is edging into the wireless telephone business via a new joint venture with Swedish communications giant Ericsson. The venture will employ components of the recently announced Microsoft Mobile Explorer (MME) platform, including a microbrowser capable of displaying Web content delivered in two different formats and a Windows NT–based backend for delivering messages to wireless systems.

Ericsson will own most of the joint venture company and will contribute its telephone production technology, a new Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) stack, and the backing of a major player in cellular telephone systems. The new company will also promote Microsoft’s wireless telephony and Internet solutions, such as the Internet Cellular Smart Access (ICSA) system that Microsoft gained when it purchased Sendit, a small Swedish company, in July 1999.

WAP is a protocol for delivering data over low-bandwidth connections such as those used by current cellular networks. It will usually transport data formatted in Wireless Markup Language (WML), which is optimized to display text on the tiny screens on wireless phones. Microsoft joined the WAP Forum in August.