| Windows CE feature phone platform gets WAP browser, MMS |
Jun. 21, 2006
 Intrinsyc has added a mobile Internet browser and an MMS messaging client from Winwap Technologies to its Windows CE-based feature phone stack. Intrinsyc's Soleus platform aims Windows CE at a broader swath of the cellphone market than just the high-end smartphone segment targeted by Windows Mobile.
Intrinsyc describes the WinWAP browser as a full browser application that provides access to WAP (wireless application protocol) services, using direct connection to a network operator WAP gateway or proxy servers. It supports WAP 2.0, and includes an HTML transcoding engine that converts received HTML into a mobile format that enables most normal web pages to be viewed on the small screens of mobile handsets.
The WinWAP MMS Client, meanwhile, is a full multimedia messaging client that provides all the functionality required to send and receive MMS (multimedia messaging service) messages, according to Intrinsyc.
Intrinsyc describes Soleus as "a turnkey software solution based on Windows CE that offers a new way to develop mobile phones." According to Intrinsyc, Soleus offers cost and flexibility advantages for feature phone and other mid-tier mobile handset designs.
Feature phones will become the largest category of mobile phones sold by 2010, according to Strategy Analytics (see chart), representing a fierce battleground between embedded Windows, Linux, and a number of other OS alternatives.
Intrinsyc released a beta of Soleus last November, and showcased the first public demonstrations of the platform at CES in January of this year. In February, the company announced the first full release of Soleus at 3GSM.
Soleus includes a suite of mobile phone applications -- including calendar, camera, contacts, dialer, file manager, media player, and phone settings -- that can be easily tailored to specific requirements, according to the company. Additionally, the company says it partners with a "select set" of third-party independent software vendors for additional applications, such as the Winwap browser and MMS software.
Intrinsyc unveiled two other third party applications at the CTIA conference in April: Earlier this month, Taiwanese ODM (original design manufacturer) Wistron became the first Soleus licensee. Wistron said it will use Soleus to develop a line of "market-driven, feature-rich phones" that are more powerful than simple handsets, but more affordable than high-end smartphones, and that it plans to supply the Soleus-based handsets to multiple mobile phone manufacturers and network operators.
Additionally, since Soleus is built on Windows CE and uses the Visual Studio tool chain just like Windows Mobile, application developers can target both the smartphone and feature phone market segments with minimal incremental effort and substantially increase market opportunity, according to Intrinsyc.
Randy Kath, CTO of Intrinsyc's Mobile Products Group, stated, "Soleus is designed to be an easy to use, turnkey solution for building feature phones and it is Intrinsyc's goal to include the best third party applications as part of the Soleus offering."
More information on the Winwap browser and MMS client is available on Winwap's website.
For further details on Soleus, refer to our earlier coverage of the release of Soleus in February:
Windows CE zeroes in on feature phones
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