Telecom Announcements: Ericsson, Vodafone, Nokia

Hmm, quite a few press releases catching my eye this morning - obviously lots of people trying to beat the 3GSM rush:

- Telepo / Ericsson (ERIC) deal for an enterprise FMC solution. About time, too - I would have thought that Ericsson's history in both PBXs and cellular would have made it a prime mover in the corporate dual-mode/FMC space, but it's been comprehensively beaten by Avaya (AV), Cisco (CSCO), NEC, Siemens (SI) et al. Also, the press release makes it sound a bit too operator-centric, rather than having the mobility management more clearly in control of the enterprise. I have a meeting with Telepo next week, so it will be interesting to see how it stacks up against the likes of Divitas' solution.

- Vodafone (VOD)/ eBay (EBAY) - much the same comments as yesterday re: MySpace. What will be interesting to see is whether there's any way Voda can use IMS in the sort of "inside-out" way I've talked about before. Basically, the idea is that the operator uses IMS as a smart pipe to enhance and interoperate with third-party Internet applications (better QoS, security, whatever), rather compete with them. Koninklijke (KPN) espouses this approach as "making the Internet even better for our customers."

- Nokia (NOK) launching free downloadable maps for S60, and - get this - Windows Mobile devices, with S40 in future. Supports download, sideload via WiFi, etc., and supports memory cards as well as over-the-air. Looks like a clever move at first sight. It'll drive a highly-desirable coach and horses through some of the more stupid operator mapping business models (look, we know maps are free on the Internet. Obviously we're not going to pay extra beyond access charges on the handset and a seeing bit of advertising, we're not stupid!).

I have to say, Nokia seems to have taken a much more Internet/software/IP-centric view of late, rather than pretending that "everything will be a billable service" from operators. This is in stark contrast to Ericsson's philosophy, I'd say, which seems to involve a corporate disbelief that end users actually like to buy and own stuff outright.