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"This will be the future" - OMA lays down guidelines for mobile

The Open Mobile Alliance is looking for the Holy Grail - the next universal mobile standard after GSM, which creates the next boom. But what it announced yesterday in Las Vegas is more of a "pfff" than a "boom" ...

New specifications! The Open Mobile Alliance was formed back in June, trying to bring together several other bodies all trying to set different standards for the future of mobile interworking, and has now announced its "Release Program" which, it says, will "accelerat the creation of mobile services."

The building blocks, says Mark Cataldo, Chair of the OMA Technical Plenary, are seven new "enablers" - mobile browsing, multimedia messaging or MMS, Digital Rights Management, DNS lookup via mobile, mobile content download, email push notification, and user/device profiles. Key to their success is the idea that all members adopt it and stop trying to compete.

"The OMA Release Program together with the new enablers illustrates a strong industry endorsement, showing that we are a market-driven alliance," said Mark Cataldo, the newly elected Chair of the OMA Technical Plenary, in a statement on the OMA web site. "Based on key market and customer requirements, the enablers designed by OMA will ultimately contribute to the creation of mobile solutions that allow both consumers and business users of mobile services to enjoy greater performance, better interoperability and enhanced ease of use."

He also announced that consolidation of the different member groups was continuing satisfactorily: OMA has finalized the integration of the Location Interoperability Forum (LIF), the MMS Interoperability Group (MMS-IOP), the SyncML Initiative and the Wireless Village Initiative.

And there are new recruits: the Mobile Wireless Internet Forum (MWIF) and the Mobile Games Interoperability Forum (MGIF) have announced plans to join the OMA.

"We welcome MGIF and MWIF to the Open Mobile Alliance and are pleased that LIF, MMS-IOP, SyncML and Wireless Village have also now successfully completed the integration. These additional initiatives further accelerate the development of interoperable specifications and demonstrate that OMA has become a central mobile services standardization body," said Jari Alvinen, the newly elected Chair of the OMA Board of Directors.

Alvinen told Reuters that these additional initiatives will "accelerate the development of interoperable specifications and demonstrate that OMA has become a central mobile services standardization body."

One of the OMA members told Reuters: "Interoperability is the key thing. What happened to GSM could happen again in wireless data with OMA," - a statement attributed to "a Nokia spokesman."