GENEVA-Finnish personal communications services carrier Sonera said it bought the business activities of ByeDesk from TeamWare Group of San Jose, Calif., for an undisclosed sum.
TeamWare is a subsidiary of Fujitsu Software Corp. and operates the ByeDesk service in collaboration with its parent company. ByeDesk is a mobile remote access product that extends e-mail, corporate contact lists and Internet information to the wireless environment.
TeamWare originally aimed the product at Global System for Mobile communications carriers, as well as corporations. Now, some 20,000 trial users on various networks are testing the system, the company said. Sonera said it will integrate ByeDesk into its new mobile portal, Sonera Zed.
“The acquisition strengthens our skills in wireless communications and plays a strategic role in Sonera’s future operations in Silicon Valley,” said Juha Varelius, executive vice president of Sonera.
Additionally, Sonera’s SmartTrust, a provider of public key infrastructure-based security solutions for mobile commerce transactions, announced it will work with Lucent Technologies Inc. in developing similar e-commerce security solutions in current and next-generation mobile phones and networks. In that effort, Sonera SmartTrust said it will partner with Cable & Wireless HKT to develop mobile e-commerce solutions for corporate and consumer customers in Hong Kong. (See related story on page 37.)
The company also unveiled an e-commerce solution based on Bluetooth wireless technology. The solution would allow a consumer to pay for vending machine products through a phone, as long as both the phone and vending machine are Bluetooth-enabled.
