Summary
There seems to be physical divergence of the devices driving application platform strategy in this market. There's an increasing amount of research and development put into making data from the current line of business applications (ERP, CRM, and BI) and into platforms (such as mobile middleware data integration servers).
On the framework side, it is open standard-based specifications that will be adopted by device manufacturers to keep the costs of device manufacturing low. With Microsoft saying that its platform is the only device platform available that includes integral support for XML Web services on devices, and with the J2ME specification expected in q1 2003, the lines seem to be blurringmaking choices more difficult.
In my next column, we will discuss emerging wireless architectures (based on mobile middleware) and mobile Web services. Keep reading!!!