What was new at BREW 2007: into the new

mojo — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 20:58:53 +0000

The BREW Conference is traditionally focused on developers. Past events brought together operators, handset makers and developers working with Qualcomm’s BREW platform for the delivery of content, namely games and other applications. There were several new aspects to the conference in 2007 that distinquish it from previous years. A clear signal of the change in the conference and for BREW, itself, was the choice of Keynote speakers, notably H3 and Time Warner Music.

BREW and GSM Operators

The addition of GSM operators this year was a first for the conference. You might wonder what the attraction for a GSM operator would be in a platform designed to deliver applications to CDMA subscribers. The answer is found in Qualcomm’s move 18 months ago to break BREW into three components: UiOne, DeliveryOne, and QPoint.

UiOne has been deployed by O2, Telecom Italia and apparently there is a deal in the works between Qualcomm and Three for use of the platform (no official announcement, yet). In Europe, the UI is determined and controlled by the handset manufacturers, but UiOne places that critical aspect of the user experience back into the operator’s domain. UiOne allows for customization through theme development as illustrated by Alltel Wireless’ Celltop application. The availability of the scripting language TrigML from UiOne’s SDK makes the UI extensible. Third party theme development, enhanced discovery and web services delivery are simplified which is very attractive to operators regardless of their underlying network technologies.

Welcome Media/Content Providers

Also, a new addition to the conference this year was the participation of media companies like keynote presenter Time Warner Music (TWM). This is foreshadowing to the future of BREW plus MediaFLO. A number of other media companies were present as attendees changing the BREW audience and definitely the conference session lineup with broader coverage than in past years. The BREW Conference has been technology centric, but with the expansion of participants new topics arose focused on solutions over technology and seamless user experience as the path to monetization.

BREW Conference 2007

mojo — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 22:01:02 +0000

The BREW Conference 2007 will take place next week in sunny San Diego, CA. I’m attending portions of the conference and would be happy to meet with anyone interested in chatting about mobile applications, companies that would like to brief me for publication at Mobile Messaging 2.0, or would participate in a podcast interview. Email me at mojo @ thisdomain or text to +1 619 804 1268. P.S. I do not answer calls unidentified by or blocking caller id.

mobilejones » BREW

What was new at BREW 2007: into the new

BREW Conference 2007