Enterprises should be careful when choosing a platform as the basis of their wireless strategy, Giga Information Group has warned, because any of the four major players could be out of the running by the end of the year.

The four major contenders to dominate the mobile client operating system (OS world are Palm OS, Windows CE, Epoc32 (or Symbian) and RIM, but according to Giga director, Carl Zetie, "it is easy to see why any one of them could be out of the game by 2001".

Zetie said at Giga's application architecture conference in London yesterday: "When a client asks which should I choose, it is my worst question."

Palm may currently have a large market share and lots of developers building applications for its OS, but it is "going through a large and messy transition from a 16bit architecture and a simple operating system, to a 32bit chip. Palm has never written an operating system before. The Palm OS was acquired".

Rival Windows CE, on the other hand, "has strong development tools and a familiar programming model, but on the downside, it is not one operating system, but a toolbox for building an operating system. There are lots of configurations to choose between".

Zetie also cast doubt on Microsoft's commitment to the OS. "Net clients can be any one of its rivals. Microsoft is more concerned about pushing its web server," he claimed.

The two other alternatives, RIM and Epoc32, face recognition problems. "Epoc32 may have strong brand awareness in Europe, but it has zero awareness in the US," said Zetie. For RIM it is the other way round.

On the technology front both are strong, however. "Epoc32 is a powerful operating system with a headstart on Java support, and RIM has great network coverage but has not courted the developer market," Zetie explained.

He recommended that users should "choose by minimising their risk and dependency by relying on middleware that doesn't lock you into one technology. If you choose a SQL Server product that only runs on Windows CE, you are locked into a Microsoft strategy from top to bottom.

A survey showed that 36 per cent of the audience have chosen Palm as their primary platform for wireless applications. Windows CE came in second place at 22 per cent."