Siemens' Group Information and Communications Mobile has announced at the Cannes 3GSM World Congress that it has selected the Symbian platform to power Siemens' next generation of smartphones.

Macromedia has announced a new partnership with Microsoft to bring Flash Player to Pocket PC devices from companies like Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, and Casio. Developers can download the Player and Flash animation software toolkit immediately from Macromedia's developer site.

Blue Squirrel has announced a new Palm OS solution called SkipWire that enables wireless users to evaluate, purchase, and download software using a SkipWire package called "Downstream."

Thomas Tempelmann has released v1.5 of his Newton Connection Tester that can: access data in Newton soups; test serial or AppleTalk connections (including IrDA & TCP/IP); and is provided open source for both Newton and Mac/Windows desktop portions of this project.

Coola has announced that their mobile information management and two-way mobile handheld data transfer technology will now support Macintosh desktop users.

Symbol Technologies has announced a new deal worth over US$70 million to provide Kmart with enterprise capable mobile handheld devices and wireless LAN technologies.

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)