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First beta-test "universal synch" PDAs, phones, appear in Amsterdam

Synching, not drowning in data; an enthusiastic band of SyncML pioneers has demonstrated phones and other devices which can swap diary and phonebook data - but agreed that user friendliness needs to be improved.

The great and the good met in Amsterdam this week at the SyncML Congress 2002 to demonstrate the latest progress on the SyncML Initiative. Among the products on display were a number of phones which already conform to the SyncML protocol and there were beta demonstrations of five client devices conforming to the emerging device management protocol.

The SyncML Initiative aims to develop and promote a single common data synchronisation model, to allow a range of mobile devices from phones, PDAs and laptops to synchronise seamlessly with networked data in a single common format. The acronym stands for Synchronisation Mark-Up Language and is based around the XML standard which is currently becoming ubiquitous on the web and anywhere else where companies want to transfer data amongst themselves.

I caught up with Donald Page, Strategic Product Manager of one of the sponsors, Symbian. Page sits on the Board of the Directors of SyncML, and I asked how things were progressing.

The synchronization protocol itself was agreed in mid-2000 and we saw the first products at the end of last year.

"Things are going very well," Page said. "Today all the phone companies have released phones in their high-end ranges, such as the Nokia 9210, which conform to the protocol and we expect to see many more in 2002. It all went very smoothly with 1.0 being released and 1.1 following which ironed out some of the implementation problems with mobile devices".

The consortium has now turned its attention to the device management protocol. Once implemented devices will be able to configure themselves automatically. "In order for this to work you cannot expect the end user to have to fiddle with the settings of their phones," commented Page. The protocol is nearing the formal review process and Page expects the final document to be completed by the end of Q1.

The current sponsors of the initiative are Ericsson, IBM, Lotus, Motorola, Nokia, Openwave, Panasonic, Starfish Software and Symbian. As usual in such things, the name Microsoft is notably absent from the list. "Microsoft have been invited to participate in all stages of the process," remarked Page. "If you want to know why they have chosen not to, you'd better ask them that."

Once the Device Management Protocol has been established Page sees a continuing role for the SyncML Initiative. "We are looking at several different avenues. Where we go from here depends on what the industry feels is important."

Page listed several possible areas. These include digital resource management which is important for service providers looking to move into application hosting, SQL databases and other data types and instant messengers.

The latter should be fun as the main contenders in the market – Microsoft and AOL – have been arguing for years about interoperability. It will be interesting to see if the SyncML Initiative can bang heads together over this one.

But I wouldn't hold my breath.