Microsoft, Ericsson partner on wireless email venture
The new unit, called Ericsson Microsoft Mobile Venture, will be 70 percent owned by Ericsson and 30 percent by Microsoft and will have its headquarters in Stockholm.
The joint company, announced in December, will introduce its first application for getting email and other personal detail over cell phones this year. Ulf Avrin will be president of the company called Ericsson Microsoft Mobile Venture.
Microsoft and Ericsson agreed to team up to tap increasing usage of email and an expected boom in demand for mobile devices that can access the Internet. Ericsson expects 1 billion people worldwide to use cell phones to link to the Web by 2005. There are already more than 435 million email accounts across the globe.
"The combination of a huge amount of mobile phones and email is a guarantee for a gigantic market," Avrin said at a press conference, declining to give a market estimate. "A logical next step would be positioning services."
The venture, based in Stockholm, will break even "pretty soon," although not this quarter, Avrin said. Its applications will be
client-independent, he said, adding that the software, for example, can run on a phone from Ericsson's main rival Nokia Oyj.
As part of the Ericsson-Microsoft alliance, Ericsson also will use Microsoft's Mobile Explorer in some of its phones. The Swedish company expects more mobile phones connected to the Web than personal computers with Internet access by 2003.
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