Sonim, a provider of IP communication solutions, has joined Symbian’s Platinum Partnership programme.

The two companies will work together to develop and promote a version of Sonim’s client technology for the Symbian OS. The software enables users to access features such as instant push-to-talk voice calls, text- and voice-based instant messaging and presence detection. These capabilites are delivered using GPRS and can be sold by network operators as value-added services. Sonim’s solutions supports standards such as session initiation protocol (SIP) and the SIP extension standard, SIMPLE.

“Sonim is committed to providing superior voice applications that help drive operator revenue. Our goal is to make IP-based instant communication ubiquitous across devices, and this partnership with Symbian takes us one step closer to our goal.” David Wood, executive vice president, partnering, evangelism and research, Symbian, added: “Symbian strives to provide its customers with innovative and compelling applications that will make a real difference to their bottom-line business objectives. The Sonim Instant Communication platform offers feature-rich solutions that will in turn help to significantly increase operator revenue.”

Insight

Push-to-talk, the so-called ‘walkie-talkie’ capability, has been attracting considerable attention recently. Nextel, the US operator which yesterday reported stronger than expected results, continues to promote its ‘Direct Connect’ service as one of the key differentiators of its iDEN network. GSM networks do not have these capabilities as standard, but Sonim has found a way of using voice-over-IP (VoIP) on GPRS and 3G networks to provide similar functionality.

Its partnership with Symbian is by no means exclusive – Sonim’s goal is to get its technology on as many device platforms as possible – but could be an important step in establishing the mass-market viability of its products. Symbian OS Series 60 devices will be the first high volume smartphone products and Sonim needs to ensure its client software is installed or readily available if it is to persuade operators to deploy the application on their networks.