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Wireless Platforms Aim to Amaze: Page 9 of 10

  • E-mail-centric. These staffers are primarily interested in sending and receiving mail. They also may use wireless for voice communications.
  • General-purpose mobile data. These employees seek maximum flexibility for data applications. They need e-mail, messaging, browsing, database access, file transfer and VPN capabilities. They will use separate mobile phones for voice, and may even use mobile phones as modems for their devices.

    To choose the best platform for each scenario, we asked vendors to list available development environments--C++, Java or browser-based, for example--as well as development tools appropriate for the platform. We also asked how many business-related applications and types of messaging, including SMS, IM and MMS, are supported, both natively and by third parties. For the Webmasters out there, we enquired about browser capabilities and markup languages supported.

    Because some enterprise users have strong hardware preferences, we asked for a list of devices on the that use each platform, broken down by device vendor.

    As for OSs, we asked about multitasking, and we queried the vendors on Java: Which versions are supported, and if Jave is not supported, what's the alternative? Security is always key, so we asked for specifics on VPN support.