Ericsson and Intel today announced an initiative to explore new mobile broadband applications for laptop PCs, in an effort to increase the proliferation of UMTS among this crucial business sector, which so far has been dominated by Wi-Fi.


Ericsson said the two hardware companies would work together to help operators design services and offer applications that they can market to both consumer and enterprise consumers. The idea appears to be in demonstrating revenue-generating applications to the end-user rather than in just providing a dumb wireless access pipe. Ericsson and Intel are further working together to ensure those new applications function across the carrier’s network, not just over the laptop and radio connection. Ericsson is bringing its UMTS/High Speed Data Access technology as well as its IP multimedia subsystem architecture to the table.

Though the companies didn’t name in specific applications likely to emerge from the partnership, they said they would focus on multimedia communications tools--which could range anywhere from VoIP to video conferencing--entertainment services and business productivity applications for the enterprise. The two also plan to bring in outside developers, providing a common set of development tools for other vendors to build applications over. Intel and Ericsson said they would unveil the program’s details at the International Telecommunications Union conference in Hong Kong next week.