Sheffield, UK and Worldwide, October, 2003 /Wi-Fi Technology News/- At the Microsoft? Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Microsoft Corp. and Vodafone outlined a technical roadmap for adding mobile Web services to applications, expanding new business opportunities for application developers and mobile network operators. The companies further underscored their desire for industry feedback and participation to enable a consistent development approach for mobile Web services.

The roadmap proposes a model that adopts the existing industry-standard Web services architecture to simplify the development of applications integrating mobile network services. The roadmap also addresses issues such as integrating mobile security and payment services with the Web services architecture, as well as exposing location and messaging services. By enabling applications developers to use a consistent, standardised development approach, the two companies seek to dramatically increase the number of applications that can access mobile network services from mobile network terminals and PCs. The Web services architecture is vendor, platform and device independent, encouraging broad participation of mobile network operators, application developers and platform providers. Microsoft and Vodafone will invite industry feedback on the mobile Web services efforts at a series of industry workshops, the first of which will be in London in January 2004.

"This is a great opportunity for developers to apply their existing Web services skills to access mobile network services," said Sanjay Parthasarathy, vice president of the Platform Strategy and Partner Group at Microsoft. "We are excited to see a wide range of new applications and user experiences that make use of mobile Web services."

Ian Maxwell, Group Strategic Relationship Director at Vodafone, said, "To jump-start standardised mobile Web services, Microsoft and Vodafone have produced a technical roadmap proposal for the industry. The proposed roadmap is an important first step toward gaining industry consensus on the convergence of mobile and PC applications and services. We look forward to working more closely with the industry to progress this initial mobile Web services standardisation work and take it forward to standards bodies."

Attendees at PDC include enterprise developers, software architects, software engineers, Web developers and Web development managers who are taking Web services to the next level. Microsoft will offer a technical breakout session Oct. 30 at 8:30 a.m. that will detail how developers can use Microsoft's Visual Studio? .NET development tools to build applications today for PCs and mobile devices that use mobile Web services. Mobile Web services in live operation from Vodafone will support the examples shown in the session.

The companies also released a white paper, titled "Mobile Web Services: Convergence of PC and Mobile Applications and Services".

More information can be found at http://www.vodafone.com/ and http://microsoft.com/mobilewebservices.

About Vodafone
Vodafone provides a full range of mobile telecommunications services, including voice and data communications. Vodafone has equity interests in 26 countries and Partner Networks in a further 9 countries, serving over 120 million proportionate customers.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq ?MSFT?) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software ? any time, any place and on any device.