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Networks can get free software for handsets. Until they use it, that is, says InnoPath

One of the sadder secrets of this week's Handsets World conference in Amsterdam will be the reality that the mobile operators will be looking to find new ways to cling onto their big corporate customers, who are planning to desert them and become operators themselves. And a package from InnoPath may be one of the components.

Amongst the announcements Innopath will make this week will be a service called "Lock and wipe" for operators. It's a bit of software which sits in the phone and if the phone is reported lost, allows the operator to close the handset down and (after an appropriate gap) wipe all data off it.

At Handsets World, such software will be on offer free. With it, all sorts of other expensive applications, which would normally cost quite a bit, will be available to the handset makers free - up to the point where they use it.

"It's called 'activation-based' software," said VP David Ginsburg - in London on his way to Amsterdam. 'It allows handset makers to sign up for features which they'd like to have in their phones, but they don't have to pay in advance - only if they have a sale to an operator who uses the features."

The software sits in a chan between theoperator network and the handset, with both server-side and terminal software working together - basically doing maintenance.

The standard, says Ginsburg, grew out of the unusual relationship between phone makers and operators in Japan, five years ago. It's called Mobile Device Management, or MDM, and standards now exist called SCOMO from the Open Mobile Alliance.

Mobile Device Management "has quickly grown to serve a critical need within the industry, with clear benefits for mobile operators and device manufacturers: increased adoption of new services to
drive revenue, reduced operational and support costs, and improved customer satisfaction and loyalty," says the InnoPath PDF.

The full press release of InnoPath's announcement this week will, eventually, appear here

OMA interoperability standards, it says, "are far from complete. Standards for firmware and configuration updates continue to evolve, and no standard for mobile diagnostics has been approved."

While OMA standards provide for interoperability, device manufacturers and/or carriers still must build device-specific clients to support the standards. Future refinements and advancements in MDM and standards "have become a core requirement for cost-effectively coping with the meteoric growth of mobile devices."