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Why can't we just get along?
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By Oliver Thylmann, Wednesday 12 June 2002  
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Just about anything that can talk and walk in the mobile industry has teamed up to support a new initiative called the Open Mobile Alliance - or OMA, for short. Including Microsoft.
That short sentence was uttered by President James Dale (aka Jack Nicholson) to the Martians in the movie Mars Attacks shortly before being obliterated - and might be a good analogy for what's currently going on in the wireless industry. Carriers want mobile phones and network equipment of all makes and sorts to get along nicely, in order to launch services across their networks without having to support different standards that in reality provide the same functionality. And now, manufacturers seem to have picked up on it as well; welcome the Open Mobile Alliance - aka OMA, which amusingly enough means Grandma in German.
Earlier today, nearly 200 of the world's leading mobile operators, device and network suppliers, information technology companies and content providers announced the formation of a new, global organization called the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). This is the first time participants from the entire mobile industry business have come together with the common agenda of moving forward towards a new era of growth through openness, interoperability and a multi-vendor ecosystem. Examples of key applications on which OMA focuses include browsing, messaging and content download. Nokia, Openwave and Microsoft are only some of the sponsoring board members.
To emphasize the importance of the formation, Nokia's Senior Vice President of Mobile Software, Pertti Korhonen, had this to say in a Nokia press release: "The significance of today's announcement can be compared to the original release of the GSM specification, which paved the way to the biggest commercial success story of the 1990s. Like GSM with voice, OMA will deliver the specifications required for a commercially solid system for mobile services, with clearly defined open and interoperable application programming interfaces."
Juha Christensen, corporate vice president of the Mobile Devices Division at Microsoft joined Korhonen in his praise and said the new alliance is a significant step to consolidate the multiple and overlapping standards bodies and specifications forums into one industry body, and break down the barriers to building a thriving market for mass adoption of wireless voice and data communications.
The Open Mobile Architecture initiative and WAP Forum have joined to form the foundation for this new organization while the Location Interoperability Forum (LIF), MMS Interoperability Group (MMS-IOP), SyncML Initiative and Wireless Village Initiative, through Memorandums of Understanding, have announced their intent to consolidate with the Open Mobile Alliance. Other industry fora focusing on mobile service specifications are also welcome to join according to the OMA, and the work previously handled within the Open Mobile Architecture initiative and the WAP Forum will be continued within the new Open Mobile Alliance.
The charter for the Open Mobile Alliance can be summarized in four points; Deliver responsive and high-quality open standards and specifications based upon market and customer requirements; Establish centers of excellence for best practices and conduct interoperability testing (IOT), including multi-standard interoperability to ensure a seamless user experience; Create and promote a common industry view on an architectural framework, and; Be the catalyst for the consolidation of standards fora and work in conjunction with other existing standards organizations and groups, such as IETF, 3GPP, 3GPP2, W3C and JCP.
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