the platform "Soleus" and is set to formally roll it out at the 3GSM World Conference in Barcelona next month.

(Click for slightly larger view of emulated feature phone menu)

Soleus represents the first Windows CE implementation aimed specifically at the burgeoning feature phone market, Intrinsyc claims.

Strategy Analytics estimated last fall that feature phones would account for around 50 percent of over 700 million mobile phones shipped in 2005, with smartphones representing just six percent. The market research firm further projected that feature phones would become the largest mobile phone category by 2010, as indicated in the following chart.

Feature phones are forecast to become the largest mobile phone category by 2010

The Soleus platform

In addition to a customized version of Microsoft's Windows CE OS and Visual Studio development tools, the Soleus platform provides pre-integrated software and hardware, and pre-certified telephony components that enable the rapid development of branded feature-phone-level handsets, according to Intrinsyc.

Intrinsyc's feature phone emulator works with Visual Studio (Click to enlarge)

Other key elements of the Soleus platform, according to Intrinsyc, are:

• Customizable mobile phone user interface -- the "Chameleon" UX Designer tool provides a simple way to control the handset's branding and user experience for differentiated phones.
  
  
• Support for the Implicit Media Player from Implicit Networks, said to be one of the most advanced media players available. It offers movies, music, pictures, slideshows, playlists, PVR-2-Go, UPnP, advanced trick modes, rich annotation, and full meta-data based browsing directly from a mobile phone handset, according to Intrinsyc.

Intrinsyc previewed the as-yet-unamed Soleus at last February's 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France, and began shipping a preview of the Soleus SDK in November.

Additional details on Intrinsyc's feature phone platform and associated development tools, including an architecture block diagram, are available in our earlier coverage.

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