Qualcomm Inc. and its BREW partners released a rash of announcements in conjunction with the BREW developer’s conference last week. The CDMA technology pioneer joined carriers, handset makers, technology vendors and content providers in pushing forward the BREW platform with it annual event, this year boasting a sold-out audience.
Indeed, the momentum behind BREW has served to propel it ahead of its rival Java, according to one industry analyst, despite Java’s wider deployment.
“Although J2ME appears to enjoy an overwhelming advantage in terms of shipments and installed base on a global basis, focusing on aggregate numbers is misleading,” said Seamus McAteer, Zelos Group’s senior analyst and managing partner and author of the firm’s new “Wireless Application Platforms: Java Versus BREW” report. “At a high level, the relative advantages result from the differences between proprietary and open platform evolution.”
McAteer said BREW is the preferred mobile-phone development platform due to the system’s simplicity. Because Qualcomm acts as the single point of contact for the development and distribution of BREW applications, developers and carriers can more quickly introduce new services and technologies to users.
“Many successful implementations in the mobile data sector have resulted from having a single source of control that specifies all components in the architecture,” McAteer said. “NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode, RIM’s Blackberry and Nextel’s push-to-talk solution are all wildly successful, premium services based on proprietary standards.”
However, McAteer said Java’s future is more promising than BREW’s. Sun Microsystems’ technology offers the integration of a services gateway and migration toward a more capable virtual machine, which could broaden its appeal beyond a relatively narrow group of consumer application developers.
Highlighting the growing nature of the BREW market, Qualcomm said Tata Teleservices in India and Rural Cellular Corp. in the United States are the two newest carriers to offer BREW services. And to improve the BREW platform, Qualcomm released a new BREW-based user interface as well as a new XML-based sales reporting technology for BREW content vendors and carriers.
Others making BREW announcements included:
c Verizon Wireless, which announced it would sell new games and other applications from the likes of Atlas Mobile, Sorrent, Jamdat Mobile Inc. and others. The carrier introduced several new innovative applications, including a karaoke singing application from First International Digital Inc. and a cooking application from Airborne Entertainment and Food Network. Indeed, such services appear to be generating a significant amount of interest. Verizon said it has recorded 70 million BREW downloads since the carrier launched the service in 2002, and that almost a third of its subscribers have BREW-capable devices.
c Motorola Inc., which released two new clamshell mobile phones featuring BREW technology. Motorola said the phones would be available in the fourth quarter.
c Kyocera Wireless Corp., which said it will work with three-dimensional technology vendor Superscape Group to ensure its upcoming Koi megapixel camera phone will be able to run 3D BREW applications when it is launched this summer.
c Reaxion, which announced it enjoyed a more than 250-percent quarter-to-quarter rise in first-quarter 2004 revenues due to the sale of BREW games.
c Atlas Mobile, which announced it will offer a “Ms. Pac-Man” game through a deal with Namco America, a “Boulder Dash” game through a deal with First Star Software Inc. and a “Daily Jigsaw Tournaments” game through a deal with Sennari Mobile.
c V-Enable, which said it will sell multimodal technology to BREW application developers.
c Infinite Ventures Inc., which said it plans to sell a series of new BREW games.
c Networks In Motion, WaveMarket and LocatioNet, which each separately released location technology extensions for BREW developers.
c Mforma Group Inc., which released a mobile directory assistance service using the BREW platform.
c Access, which said it developed a version of its NetFront microbrowser for the platform.
c Xpherix, which released its iBackup, mobile phone backup and restoration system and announced enhancements to its suite of mobile productivity products.
c dotPhoto, which announced Ringtalker, MyWallpaper and PictaVision applications for customizing handsets with images and sound.
c And FusionOne, which showed its personal content management products, MightyBackup and MightyPhone 2.0
