Vodafone, Orange and NTT DoCoMo are the leading lights in a new alliance to lobby handset manufacturers. The grouping is catchily titled "Open Mobile Terminal Platform Alliance".

The aim of the alliance is to steer manufacturers towards developing more user friendly phones. Ultimately the consumer should be spending more on new high value services such as games and video.

Industry wide standards have to be applied. An example is the huge range of camera phones sold. However when was the last time someone sent you a picture on the mobile? The preponderance of different technologies makes the market dead in the water.

Not only the handset manufacturers are to be lobbied, but operating systems suppliers, such as Symbian and Microsoft.

Other members include:-

 *TIM
 *Telefonica Moviles
 *T-Mobile
 *Smart
 *MMO2

One of the requests is for more platform independent operating software. For instance Java.