The Register dug out a 3GSM announcement Microsoft quietly made last week: Vodafone has chosen the company to host its IM traffic. That's a death blow for the GSMA initiative launched at last year's show where the organization aimed to create a single IM application for all of the 700 million mobile phone users served by GSMA carrier members. Vodafone and Orange were two of the biggest names on the list, but now both have gone to Microsoft for help.
According to the report: "Initially, the cellular operators felt it was important to avoid a software platform from outside the cellular community coming to dominate this, but now it looks like the effort of hosting such a network looks daunting and Vodafone would rather let Microsoft have the headache." The standardized IM initiative also was a threat toSMS, which looks safe and ever-profitable still.
For more on Vodafone's decision to go with MS IM:
- check out this report in The Register