Motorola Promises Internet Browsing on Entire Mobile Phone Range.

Motorola has promised to include Internet browsing capabilities on all its mobile phones in the year 2000. The statement came on the opening day of the CeBIT exhibition and coincided with Motorola_s introduction of a new range of personal communication products. Frank Lloyd, president of Motorola_s Personal Communications Sector for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said that Motorola_s whole range of digital phones would be Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) compliant as soon as the interoperability standards for the protocol have been agreed. "This means that consumers can expect to see the first Internet-browsing capabilities appearing on a Motorola GSM phone by the end of the year, and across our entire digital phone range in 2000," he said. Motorola is joining with Ericsson and Nokia in a joint marketing initiative aimed at making the mobile Internet easier to promote. It is being called Mobile Media Mode, and will use a universal icon that identifies mobile devices and Internet content that are designed to work together. Mobile phones will not, of course, be able to display all the advanced layouts that are now seen on the World Wide Web. The announcement follows others earlier this year which indicated the trend. Motorola announced a $50 million contract with Cellnet on February 9 to deliver GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) capability across its GSM network. This facilitates applications such as Internet-browsing and mobile e-commerce. Also in February, Motorola announced a $1 billion alliance with Cisco Systems to create an open wireless, digital communications infrastructure, based on the Internet protocol. At this week_s CeBIT, Motorola showed its latest products, which included the smallest and lightest dual-band GSM mobile phone and the world_s first tri-band GSM phone.