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Microsoft is to embark on a last-ditch charm offensive over the coming weeks to avoid paying a multibillion-dollar fine to the European Commission, which is preparing to make a ruling on its long-running antitrust investigation into the US software giant. Executive and legal advisers from Microsoft are expected to hold several discussions with competition regulators working for Mario Monti, the EU’s Competition Commissioner, in the hope of reaching a settlement before the Commission delivers a ruling on the case. The Commission is circulating a draft decision that Microsoft broke European competition law and abused its dominant position in the market for computer operating systems. If made official, the decision could see the software company being fined as much as 10 per cent of its annual revenues, or about $3.2 billion (£1.75 billion).

Sources close to the discussions said that the Commission was hoping to make its ruling before May 1, when several nations join the European Union. Before then, they said Microsoft would intensify its efforts to reach a settlement. A Microsoft spokesman said: “This is a standard part of the process and Microsoft remains committed to working actively with the Commission towards an amicable solution.” Signor Monti has accused Microsoft of continuing to abuse its monopoly in the software market long after settling an antitrust battle with the US Department of Justice. That case lasted five years and ended with Microsoft agreeing to make concessions to rivals. During its own four-year investigation, the Commission gathered evidence from more than 150 companies in the high-tech industry. Based on what it has learnt, the Commission alleges that Microsoft continues to stifle rival products such as RealPlayer and Apple’s Quicktime by bundling its Media Player entertainment software with Windows.

News source: Times Online

Gal Saloman, chief executive of Discretix, told The Register that 12-15 handsets feature its crypto technology. These devices include phones from Sony Ericsson and other manufacturers, some of which will be declared publicly during the forthcoming 3GSM conference.

Over the last year mobile operators have become more interesting in selling content over mobile phones, providing access to corporate calendaring and performing firmware upgrades over the air. This requirement has led to a need to hardware-based security from handset manufacturers.

Without improvements in security the industry risks repeating the cracks to games for Nokia NGage the accompanied the high-profile release of the integrated phone / gaming device last year, Saloman warned. NGage's protection technology was software based and therefore less secure than a hardware-based system, Discretix argues.

Discretix is a member of the Symbian Platinum Program and its technology also supports Linux. Saloman said Discretix is "still waiting for its first Microsoft customer".

"We'd love to help but we're not seeing much traction in the market," he added.

Discretix also provides security technology for PDAs and storage cards. By contrast to mobile phones this is an area where demand for Discretix' security technology for Microsoft-based devices is far more tangible.