Apple Lands Major Content Delivery Deal With Sun & Ericsson

February 12th, 2002 at 2:00 PM - News by Vern Seward

Apple, Sun, and Ericsson announced a partnership to deliver wireless media. Apple made the announcement yesterday (Feb. 12, 2002) stating that the partnership was formed to provide wireless media solutions based on standards. Note the gratuitous (but very cool) slam at the proprietary streaming technologies used by some other companies made by Phil Schiller in the fluff quote that we left in the text below. From Apple:

Apple, Ericsson and Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced a relationship that will enable network operators to deliver standardized multimedia content to a variety of wireless devices including mobile phones and PDAs. Drawing on Appleis leadership in content creation, Sunis expertise in content delivery and Ericssonis experience in wireless infrastructure, the Ericsson Content Delivery Solution will expand the market for streaming media, opening new distribution channels for content providers.

This standards-based solution is an end-to-end platform that includes: Appleis QuickTime for content creation and encoding, Sunis reliable and scalable software and systems to enable content distribution, and Ericssonis ability to provide mobile operators with a full infrastructure and services solution.

"The Content Delivery Solution will open up new revenue streams for operators by providing users with high quality multimedia services, such as movie clips and instant news on demand," said Torbjörn Nilsson, senior vice president, Ericsson Marketing and Strategic Business Development. "The cooperation with Apple and Sun ensures availability of multimedia content, thus bridging the media industry with the mobile community."

Apple, Ericsson and Sun believe open standards are critical to bringing revolutionary technology to new markets and to delivering the future of mobile data services. All three companies are leaders in their industries in the development and use of open standards. Ericsson is a founding member of the 3GPP, and Apple and Sun are co-founders of the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA). Both the 3GPP and ISMA are organizations dedicated to ensuring interoperable, standards-based technologies and products in the market. Additionally, QuickTime was chosen by the International Organization for Standards (ISO) as the file format for MPEG-4.

"Working with Ericsson and Sun is the perfect example of how using open standards can bring powerful technology to consumers and open new markets for businesses," said Philip Schiller, Appleis senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Weire excited that Ericsson chose QuickTime for the Content Delivery Solution. QuickTime is widely used by content developers, and the Mac is the platform of choice for the creative community."

"The rapidly expanding content delivery market requires industrial-strength, readily scaling open systems which are the heart of Sunis business," said Ann Wettersten, vice president of Sunis Wireless and Content Delivery Networks Group. "Weire pleased to join Apple and Ericsson in enabling the delivery of rich media services that enable the wireless lifestyle."

Apple has not added any additional information on this development to its Web site other than the press release.