| Open Mobile Alliance | |
| Abbreviation: | OMA |
| Merger: | IPSO Alliance |
| Type: | Nonprofit NGO |
| Purpose: | International technical standards |
| Headquarters: | San Diego, California, United States |
| Membership: | Wireless vendors, information technology businesses, mobile operators, application & content providers |
| Language: | English |
| Leader Title: | General Manager |
| Leader Name: | Seth Newberry |
| Num Staff: | 143 |
OMA SpecWorks, previously the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), is a standards organization which develops open, international technical standards for the mobile phone industry. It is a nonprofit Non-governmental organization (NGO), not a formal government-sponsored standards organization as is the International Telecommunication Union (ITU): a forum for industry stakeholders to agree on common specifications for products and services.
The OMA was created in June 2002 as an answer to the proliferation of industry forums each dealing with a few application protocols: WAP Forum (focused on browsing and device provisioning protocols), the Wireless Village (focused on instant messaging and presence), The SyncML Initiative (focused on data synchronization), the Location Interoperability Forum, the Mobile Games Interoperability Forum, and the Mobile Wireless Internet Forum. Each of these forums had its bylaws, its decision-taking procedures, its release schedules, and in some instances there was some overlap in the specifications, causing duplication of work.
Members include traditional wireless industry players such as equipment and mobile systems manufacturers (Ericsson, ZTE, Nokia, Qualcomm, Rohde & Schwarz) and mobile operators (AT&T, NTT Docomo, Orange, T-Mobile, Verizon), and also software vendors (Gemalto, Mavenir and others).[1]
In March, 2018, it merged with the IPSO Alliance to form OMA SpecWorks.[2]
Related standards bodies include: 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Its mission is to provide Interoperability of services across countries, operators and mobile terminals.The OMA only standardises applicative protocols; OMA specifications are intended to work with any cellular network technologies being used to provide networking and data transport. These networking technology are specified by outside parties. In particular, OMA specifications for a given function are the same with either GSM, UMTS, or CDMA2000 networks.Adherence to the standards is entirely voluntary; the OMA does not have a mandative role..OMA members that own intellectual property rights (e.g. patents) on technologies that are essential to realizing a specification agree in advance to provide licenses to their technology on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing" terms to other members.OMA is incorporated in California, United States.
The OMA maintains many specifications, including:
The OMA specifications inspired or formed the base for the following: