FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Cell phone makers, telecoms carriers and Internet groups are squaring up for a fight for dominance of the mobile Internet, finally ready for market after years of promises and hundreds of billions in investments.
Wireless broadband is coming of age, making rivals of companies such as Nokia Oyj, Google Inc, Microsoft Corp and Apple Inc, who previously could afford to coexist relatively peacefully.
Mobile networks are now capable of delivering the Internet as smoothly to a mobile phone as to a PC, with the clunky handsets, stuttering downloads and network jams of the recent past almost forgotten in many developed markets.
And the scramble to capitalize on that opportunity will loom over all other business at next week's Mobile World Congress.
"Web, Web, Web -- if you ain't walking onto the stand hand in hand with a Web guy you ain't no one," said Ben Wood, chief analyst at UK-based telecoms and IT research firm CCS Insight.
The outcome of the struggle to win the mobile Web will not only be crucial for the combatants but will decide how the mobile Web is experienced by billions of people.
At the fair, visitors will be on alert for sightings of prototypes of the Gphone -- phones built on a Google open software platform that will help it loosen up the market and extend its online advertising power into mobile search ads.
Chip designer ARM Holdings Plc, for one, will show Google's so-called Android platform in action at the four-day fair that starts in Barcelona on Monday, a source close to the company has told Reuters.
