Gossip

Microsoft's new smartphone partner - Siemens? or RIM?

Why is it such a secret? - the Microsoft-driven smartphone that is due to launch tomorrow (Wednesday)? It could, of course, just be a boring, small, also-ran company. Or Siemens. But could it be that it isn't Siemens, after all, but RIM?

According to the company which is handling publicity for the launch, it will be a "major, global wireless company." The trouble is, there aren't that many options.

We can pretty much rule out shareholder pioneers in Symbian - Sony Ericsson and Nokia both see Windows Mobile as the evil PC empire trying to invade their phone business. We know that Motorola already has a Windows Mobile phone - Orange is shipping it this month.

Samsung, Mitac, and other smaller phone companies have already announced that they're going Windows Mobile, and have also delayed their launches many times. There would be no surprise there.

Siemens is about the only major name left. If it were Siemens, then Microsoft's excitement would be understandable. If it isn't, then the excitement tomorrow when the cat emerges from the bag will be muted, at best.

There is one exception to that: if Microsoft won over the maverick newcomer to GSM: Research in Motion. The RIM Blackberry is sufficiently popular in America that it could take a lot of users into the Windows Mobile camp if it adopted that platform. And it's sufficiently unknown in Europe that it could use the help.

There would be some logic to that, despite the fact that, on the face of it, RIM is its own platform, and wouldn't dare dilute its share any more.

However, a calculated look at the RIM future might suggest that it is a minnow in a sea of sharks, compared with the market share of Symbian, Linux, Palm and Windows in the phone business - and it must do something to overcome the perception that "the Blackberry isn't much of a phone."

The Blackberry's relative obscurity in phone circles is another pointer to the possibility that it just might be RIM. The phone club is a tightly knit one, with all sorts of secret cabals sharing intellectual property - patents and copyright - in the basic alliance of "those who are not Qualcomm" who created GSM.

If Microsoft's new partner is one of the GSM gang, then it's very impressive that nobody has managed to penetrate the secrecy. If it's RIM, then it's not quite so surprising.

But I'm prepared to eat my Hunky Words tomorrow!