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What's fundamental to success in a mobile app is XML - Microsoft

German phone company, Deutsche Telekom, has opted not just for a Microsoft-designed cellphone, but for a Microsoft .Net based IT infrastructure which will underlie all its cellphone operations.

Bruce Lynn, director of "network server providers" told the Newswireless Net that " our dot-Net architecture really captured the imagination of Deutsche Telekom, and sits with their strategic plans."

It's exactly the wrong moment, for the rival platform of Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola et al, based on Symbian. Symbian is the product with the momentum, and the backing of all the industry greats. Against it, in the phone business, are a few trivial names. Sendo, a startup; Samsung, backing not only Stinger but also backing Symbian and any other standard around; and almost nobody else of real importance in the cellphone world.

But Symbian, however powerful in its field, is only a mobile platform. The .Net platform is Microsoft's entire strategy from the biggest SQL server management machinery, right down to the smallest hand-held device.

"The phone is just one part of the mobility revolution," said Lynn. "If you want that, we have a strong offering, but we're focusing not on a particular form factor, whether laptop of phone, but the usage - being mobile" - and he added: "It's important to have an end-to-end solution, and we're creating that."

Lynn, like most Microsoft spokesmen these days, speaks softly, avoiding any impression of wanting to dominate, or monopolise - naturally! but he can't conceal (nor does he try to) the importance of having a technology which nobody else has, based on an open standard, and reaching with a compatible framework from top to bottom of the IT infrastructure.

" When you're developing something on the server for a mobile scenario, then if there's a good chance there's a Windows like device at the other end; you can make a lot of assumptions about what you can do," said Lynn. "With non-Windows devices at the mobile end, there will be typically a bit more work to do."

The world tends to see the dispute between Microsoft and Sun as being the headline story; Java versus C# languages, or .Net versus the J2ME runtime environment -in certain devices. It looks like it's a lot deeper than that.

At IBM, Java is as much a religion as it is in Sun. Inside Microsoft, the equivalent religion is an XML-based framework, extending at least as far from top to bottom of the IT chain as Java does. Compared with the enormous ambition of both the software giants, the minor plans of Psion in purely hand-held, mobile devices, seem pretty trivial.

It may not work out that simply.

Looking at the various Windows-based devices already in the mobile market, it's easy to see why some designers feel they are commoditised to the point that there's no real difference between Compaq, H-P, Fujitsu or anybody else. And there may be more work involved in making a Symbian phone or PDA work with the universal Java or universal .Net frameworks, than in just using the framework provided.

But it remains to be seen whether the smaller, more specialised device might not be more capable of differentiating, standards or no standards.