The Stinger Platform
The Stinger platform first made headlines at the Comdex Fall 2000 show with promises that smartphone users could, very soon, compose e-mail messages, read short documents or browse the Internet even when without a wireless connection. Comparing its two platforms, the company said that where the PocketPC was designed for phone-enabled PDAs, Stinger will be the foundation for phone-centric devices.

Taking a page from NTT DoCoMo’s success story, Microsoft will also make it easy for software developers to create applications. By way of a drag-and-drop system, developers can create or transform Windows applications into Stinger-based applications. By doing so, Microsoft hopes to get a head start in the smartphone software market: While the competition takes the time to develop applications based on other standards from the ground up, it could be flooding the market with thousands of services.

Richard Lindh, head of Microsoft’s wireless division in Europe, told Reuters that the Stinger-based smartphones would require only 8 megabits of memory and are expected to operate with data speeds of 100 to 150 kbps on GPRS mobile networks, but not in highly dense areas.

Smartphones
Mitsubishi plans to launch a Stinger-enabled phone, under its Trium band, which could be on store shelves later this year.

At the Congress, U.K.-based Sendo demonstrated its first color prototype of Z100 smartphone, based on Stinger OS. The Sendo Z100 Multimedia Smartphone is the lightest and smallest GPRS tri-band Smartphone with a 65,000-color TFT display, comparable to a high-end laptop display, the manufacturer said. In addition to being a fully- functional phone operating on GSM 900, 1800, and 1900 networks, it also plays MP3 and WMA audio files.

Endorsements from Mitsubishi and Sendo are encouraging, but it remains to be seen if Stinger can take off without the backing from the bigger players the likes of Motorola, Nokia, Matsuchita or Ericsson?