The three companies that founded the MeT initiative in April, Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia today announced that Siemens has joined the initiative. The four companies will work together to jointly develop an open and common industry framework for secure mobile electronic transactions. The inclusion of Siemens in MeT is an important step towards the initiative’s goal of facilitating fast adoption of trusted mobile commerce services. It was also announced that the first MeT Workshop will take place in Amsterdam on October 16-18 of this year. Participants to the workshop will have the possibility to influence the future of mobile e-commerce.
MeT will offer consumers a safe and easy way to make e-commerce transactions by using their mobile phone. It will also facilitate the development of innovative new services and applications - benefiting customers and service providers alike.
"The objective of the MeT initiative is to leverage mobile transactions through open standards and wide industry support", said Martti Granberg, Director, Mobile E-Business Technologies, Nokia Mobile Phones and chairman of MeT. "The MeT initiative will utilise existing standards and technologies whenever appropriate, but also define new ones when needed. Only this way can we achieve the critical mass to create a powerful de facto standardized framework for mobile transactions worldwide. We are therefore extremely pleased to welcome Siemens as a participant in MeT and we look forward to Siemens’ contribution to this very important work. At the same time we welcome all other mobile phone manufacturers, who would like to share our basic views, to join MeT."
"Ericsson expects around 600 million mobile Internet users by 2004", says
Jan Ahrenbring, Vice President Marketing and Communications at Ericsson
Mobile Communications. "The most important thing that is needed to get all
these consumers to start using mobile e-commerce is a standard, which makes
it safe and easy to use. We are very glad to see more manufacturers sharing
this view and we welcome Siemens as a new member in the initiative," says Ahrenbring.
“The MeT initiative is aiming to create a global framework for the development of mobile e-commerce and we are delighted that Siemens is joining MeT to help bring this about”, said Charlie Herbert, Director of E-Commerce, Motorola Europe, Middle East and Africa. “Siemens will provide valuable input and we hope that this move will encourage more manufacturers to participate in the initiative.”
“Consumers must feel that their mobile devices are personal and secured according to their individual needs”, says Georges Boulloy, Vice President Product Marketing of Siemens Mobile Devices. “As a leading provider of mobile phones across Europe and Asia, we are excited to be part of an alliance which will pioneer the future of mobile e-business.”
The MeT technologies and concepts will work on all networks, with all services and from all mobile devices and will draw on existing industry standards such as WAP, Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS), Wireless Identification Module (WIM), Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and Bluetooth. Privacy and security will be ensured with digital signatures and cryptography services for transaction verification, confidentiality, authentication and non-repudiation. Examples of MeT based applications include secure access and use of personal credit cards, debit cards, loyalty schemes and ticketing.
Participants in the workshop in October will come from around the globe and across business segments such as operators, banks, service providers, online brokers, payment organisations, travel, transport, entertainment, IT companies, developers and mobile phone manufacturers.
A first draft of the MeT specification is available now for review by the participants to the workshop at www.mobiletransaction.org. The workshop will focus on harmonising the draft MeT specification with requirements highlighted by the participants as being the most important for their respective businesses. Breakout sessions will be a key tool for the workshop as a way to effectively extract and discuss the relevant issues.
More information is found on www.mobiletransaction.org.
Notes to Editors:
The MeT Initiative was formed jointly by Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia on 11 April 2000 with the purpose of jointly developing an open and common industry framework for secure mobile electronic transactions. The initiative will use existing and emerging standards in creating the common framework with the goal of facilitating fast adoption of trusted mobile commerce services. This is a global initiative as Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Siemens are committed to the development of a standard that mirrors the increasing pattern of businesses and consumers making purchases without regard to country borders.
About Ericsson
Ericsson is the leading communications supplier, combining innovation in mobility and Internet in creating the new era of Mobile Internet. Ericsson provides total solutions covering everything from systems and applications to mobile phones and other communications tools. With more than 100,000 employees in 140 countries, Ericsson simplifies communications for customers all over the world. For more information about Ericsson, visit the Website at www.ericsson.com/pressroom.
About Motorola, Inc.
Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) is a global leader in providing integrated communications solutions and embedded electronic solutions. Sales in 1999 were $33.1 billion. For more information about Motorola, visit the Website at www.motorola.com.
About Nokia
Nokia is paving the way to the Mobile Information Society with its innovative products and solutions. The company is the leading mobile phone supplier and a leading supplier of mobile, fixed and IP networks, related services as well as multimedia terminals. In 1999, Nokia's net sales totaled EUR 19.8 billion (USD 19.9 billion). Headquartered in Finland, Nokia is listed on the New York (NOK), Helsinki, Stockholm, London, Frankfurt and Paris stock exchanges and employs more than 60 000 people. For more information about Nokia, please visit www.nokia.com.
About Siemens IC Mobile
The Siemens Information and Communication Mobile Group (26,000 employees, sales of 6 billion EUR in first 9 months of FY 2000) offers a complete range of mobile telephone products including devices, infrastructure and applications. Devices include mobile phones, ISDN phones, mobile organizers, cordless and corded phones. The infrastructure portfolio includes the complete range of network technologies from base stations and switching systems to applications and intelligent networks.
For further information about this Siemens group, please visit our home page: http://www.siemens.de/ic/mobile
For further information, please contact:
Jan Ahrenbring, Vice President, Marketing and Communications
Ericsson Mobile Communications AB
Phone: +46 70 590 9900
Jan.ahrenbring@ecs.ericsson.se
Patrick Hamilton
Motorola
441 256 790 481
patrick.hamilton@motorola.com
Pekka Isosomppi
Nokia
Tel. +358 10 5051
pekka.isosomppi@nokia.com
Georg Wolf
Siemens ICM Mobile Devices
Tel. +49 (0)89 722 – 32 431
georg.wolf@mch.siemens.de