* Motorola converged handset to be redesigned
Motorola’s long-coming CN620 handset, a converged 802.11a Wi-Fi/GSM cellular smart phone aimed at mobile workers in enterprises, will not be commercially deployed in its current form after all.
Early this month, the company decided, instead, to enhance the handset and its related Enterprise Seamless Mobility system components with features that better reflect current usage trends, such as unified messaging, presence capabilities and instant messaging.
The system, developed with partners Avaya and Proxim Wireless, was first announced in February 2003. Since then, the handset and system components have been in beta in dozens of trials, as Motorola worked on issues such as reauthentication delays between the disparate networks and handset battery power (a notorious issue for 802.11a-based devices). Meanwhile, trends in mobility networking have expanded to embrace a larger pool of integrated, virtual services that span multiple networks.
In addition to the CN620, Motorola’s own Wireless Services Manager server software (which manages signal handoffs between Wi-Fi and cellular networks), Avaya’s PBX components and partner Proxim Wireless’ Wi-Fi access points – all part of the Enterprise Seamless Mobility system – will be enhanced with the applications mentioned. The system might also be expanded to include 802.11b/g and, possibly, 802.11n radios.
The next-generation system is scheduled to ship in the first half of 2007.
Motorola has since announced its Motorola Mobility Suite, an integrated software framework intended to help enterprises with rapid development and deployment of enterprisewide mobile applications. The company says the framework also provides device-level intrusion protection, user authentication and authorization, data encryption and secure network access control.
