Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia Team Up in e-Commerce Pact
By Cindy Christ

The world's three largest mobile phone makers said Tuesday they'll work together to create an open standard for secure wireless electronic commerce.

At a London press conference, Ericsson (ERICY), Motorola (MOT) and Nokia (NOK) announced the alliance as part of an effort to speed up consumer use of wireless devices to buy products over the Internet, trade stocks and bank online, make electronic payments, and conduct other transactions.

Creating a standard for safe, wireless e-commerce also would open the market for handling small transactions using mobile devices, such as buying tickets or making short distance payments to point-of-sale machines and parking meters, the companies said in a joint statement.

The wireless phone giants' goal is to combine existing and emerging standards to develop a common framework for use in hundreds of millions of mobile devices that will be built in the years to come.

Unlike desktop computers, which by and large run on Microsoft's Windows operating system, the platform for mobile communications is still evolving and varies across product line and geography.

Analysts say the holy grail of wireless communications belongs to those who succeed in establishing a de facto standard allowing users of different systems to communicate easily with each other.

Ericsson estimates that by 2004 there will be around one billion users of mobile telephony and some 600 million mobile Internet subscribers worldwide.

"The most important thing that is needed to get all these consumers to start using mobile e-commerce is a standard, which makes it safe and easy to use," said Jan Ahrenbring, vice president of marketing and communications at Ericsson Mobile Communications.

As more people begin to access the Internet via wireless devices, security will become a key concern.

"The ambition is to formulate an environment which allows mobile operators, financial institutions and other service providers to facilitate secure mobile transactions," Ahrenbring added.

The companies said they would merge existing efforts to secure mobile transactions and would invite representatives from the telecommunications, financial and information technology industries to help.

Existing technology the three will integrate include Wireless Application Protocol or WAP security functions and Wireless Key encryption functions already used in mobile payment programs.

Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola plan to publish technical standards and other details jointly developed on their Web sites by the end of May.

Depending upon input from other industries, the companies plan to complete the open framework before summer.