Mobility vendor Socket Mobile has won a contract to supply umpires at Wimbledon with its SoMo 650 handheld computers.

Umpires at the two-week tennis tournament will use the SoMo 650, which supports both Windows Mobile 5.0 and Windows Mobile 6 Classic, to officiate tennis matches at the tournament.

The SoMo 650 will run the Wimbledon Scorer application from sports IT provider EDH Sport, which aids the umpire when managing the match by prompting events such as ball changes or for players to change ends of the court.

The product also registers all entrants into the tournament, picks eligible registrants and assigns each person their place in the draw for the first round. After each day the SoMo 650 suggests an order of play, across the 18 courts, for the next day.

Bob Zink, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Socket Mobile, said: “The running of an event like Wimbledon is a huge undertaking and Socket is proud to be part of such an important system,”

“The amount of data an umpire needs to process is constantly increasing, but advances in mobile technology mean that decisions are made and relayed quicker than ever. The handheld mobile computers will play an integral part of the planning and running of the championship.”