MICROSOFT ON MONDAY will suddenly change the cell phone landscape long dominated by Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola when it announces deals with three of the six largest wireless carriers in the United States -- Cingular, Verizon, and VoiceStream -- to sell handsets running Microsoft's Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition operating system.

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The announcement will be made at the CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association) conference in Orlando, Fla.

The agreements will see competitive handsets manufactured by HTC (High Tech Computer), maker of the Compaq iPaq; Sendo, an ODM (original device manufacturer); and AudioVox, a division of Toshiba, start shipping units next quarter. The units will be branded as VoiceStream, Cingular, and Verizon devices, respectively.

VoiceStream will brand its GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) cellular phone made by HTC as a VoiceStream device running Microsoft Phone Edition software. VoiceStream will offer its iStream GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) wireless data services on the phone. GPRS is also called 2.5G data. Real-world performance is rated at about 25KBps to 40KBps, according to most industry experts.

The color device will be priced, after a carrier subsidy, in the same price range as current Pocket PC devices, according to Ed Suwanjindar, product manger with the Mobile Products Group at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash.

VoiceStream's parent company, Deutsche Telekom T-Mobile division, also inked a deal with Microsoft to ship similar handsets in Europe along with the promise of delivering Web services over the phone.

Cingular will brand and ship a tri-band GSM phone, the Sendo Z-100 smart phone, later this year.

Verizon, a CDMA wireless carrier will unveil a co-branded convergence device with AudioVox called Thera. The device will be a full PDA (personal digital assistant) as well as a CDMA 1XRT data phone and will ship next quarter. The 1XRT is also called a 3G phone and has performance ratings equivalent to GPRS, according to experts.

The Thera measures 3.05 inches wide by 5.02 inches high by 0.77 inches deep and weighs 7 ounces. The color device will include a touch-screen keyboard, an SD (Secure Digital) card slot, infrared, USB, and a headphone jack.

The device will also include Windows Media Player, Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, and Pocket Internet Explorer.

Microsoft is not considered a player in the cell phone market as yet. Gerry Purdy, president of Mobile Insights, a mobile consultancy in Mountain View, Calif., said that Microsoft will not be a contender in this market unless it finds a way to add value beyond the usual cell phone features. Purdy said unlike its dominance in desktops, no one needs Microsoft to make a phone call.

The Microsoft Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition operating system may change that. Among the OS' salient features are the ability to use one-touch dialing from any application as well as the ability to make any phone number input by a user a "live" number, which is similar in concept to typing a URL in an application that becomes an actual link to the Web site.

Because the Phone Edition is a so-called real-time operating system, it will allow simultaneous work in an application while talking on the phone. The operating system also features the ability to do "over-air synchronization."

"This is a new piece of functionality, over air synch with email, calendar and contacts," said Suwanjindar.

The OS also supports Wi-Fi or WLAN 802.11 'a', 'b', or 'g'.

Up until now, the majority of cellular handsets shipping worldwide have included either proprietary operating systems from the major handset manufacturers with custom browsers or more recently with the Symbian OS. Symbian was created by an alliance between Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, and the Symbian creator, Psion, based in Great Britain.

Recently, cellular manufacturers and wireless carriers have also began deploying WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) phones that support Sun's J2ME (Java 2 Mobile Edition) development platform.

However, Sun's J2ME is not an operating system.

"Java is a development platform that in some ways behaves like an OS. It has some of the features of an OS. It integrates very well with Linux," said Garnet Brown, senior product marketing manager at Lineo, in Seattle, Wash.

Lineo has an embedded version of the Linux OS that is currently used by the Sharp Zaurus PDA.

While Microsoft has made little headway in getting any of the major handset manufacturers that dominate the cell phone market -- Ericsson, Nokia, and Motorola -- to use its OS, the agreements with major wireless carriers appear to be a way around the manufacturers' intransigence. In the long run, if Microsoft is successful with a strategy that has first-tier carriers selling second-tier handsets, Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola may have to change their tune.