Casio and Siemens join Windows CE club

Casio and Siemens' Communications Devices (CD) division are to develop Internet-enabled mobile devices based on the Microsoft Windows CE operating system (OS).

Siemens has seen most of its major telecoms equipment rivals enter alliances, either through Symbian, or elsewhere. None have so far publicly opted for the Windows CE OS, which has been criticised by Microsoft rivals and analysts as currently too unwieldy for the evolving smartphone market.

The German manufacturer said upcoming products - to be seen in prototype form at CeBIT 2000 next year - will work on today's second-generation GSM and CDMA mobile networks.

The longer-term goal will be to exploit high-speed GPRS and full third-generation IMT-2000/UMTS network standards.

Peter Zapf, president Siemens CD, said field workers in certain vertical sectors and managers needing constant access to corporate information are the first two target groups. Voice is not the focus of the partnership.

Peter Mann, Casio R&D development manager, said: "The future devices will have many capabilities -we'll be able to do full HTML, video, and MP3 over a single device."

Greg Levin, director marketing services at Microsoft, said more deals are coming up which involve Windows CE - under a new 'Windows Powered' brand - but denied Microsoft is playing catch-up with Symbian and Palm Computing.

"Symbian has no technical advantages over CE," he said.