BREW 2007

Patent rites

Jason Ankeny — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 06:59:59 -0400

The air seemed to leave the room during Paul Jacobs' annual keynote address at last week's BREW 2007 conference as the Qualcomm CEO turned his focus to the subject on everyone's minds: his company's ongoing patent infringement battle with semiconductor supplier Broadcom and the resulting International Trade Commission decision to ban import of 3G handsets employing Qualcomm chips ruled to violate Broadcom patents. "We think the ITC's decision and remedy are unreasonable and wrong," a visibly tense Jacobs said. "We will immediately seek an emergency stay, and ask the president to veto the ITC decision. But these actions have not distracted us from our focus--we will continue to persevere and execute on our vision."

Hours later, Qualcomm's vision seemed to grow blurrier when the ITC denied its stay request, proclaiming in an eight-page ruling issued Thursday that the chipmaker failed to meet a "four-prong test" applied by courts to determine whether to grant preliminary injunctions. (And if you've ever undergone the four-prong test, you know just how painful it can be.) Industry association CTIA is already imploring President Bush to step in against the ITC decision, while Qualcomm will likely also seek intervention from the U.S. Court of Appeals.

But it seems Jacobs knew exactly what he was talking about after all. Reports out of Sprint suggest the operator is already implementing a Qualcomm software patch as a workaround against the ban, with none of its upcoming handset launches negatively impacted by the ITC's actions. In other words, life goes on. You can't be surprised by this development--some pundits were ready to declare the ITC's decision tantamount to outlawing innovation across the U.S. wireless space, but if anything, Qualcomm's software fix suggests that the industry simply moves too fast for the government to play catch-up.

Regardless of which side of the Qualcomm/Broadcom debate you support, the real problem lies with a U.S. Patent Office and Trademark Office that thrives on patent quantity, not quality. Since 1991, the PTO has generated all of its funding via patent and trademark processing fees--no wonder the agency has issued over seven million patents since March 2006 alone. A PTO concentrating on improved, clearer-drawn patents issued in more limited numbers would create intellectual properties far less susceptible to the kinds of costly, convoluted court battles that inevitably result when an innovation's origins and intentions are cloudy. When patent cases go to trial, the only clear winners are the lawyers--whoever patented the concept of billable hours was the most prescient thinker of them all. - Jason

AmberWatch Mobile greenlights child-safety application

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:02:20 -0400

By Jason Ankeny

AmberWatch Mobile, a sub-brand of the not-for-profit child safety group the AmberWatch Foundation, announced at BREW 2007 the launch of a new mobile service that will provide GPS tracking capabilities to wireless devices in an effort to keep consumers and their families safe from threats like abduction and molestation. Scheduled for a September rollout, the AmberWatch Mobile service was developed by location services provider WaveMarket--the service will include text, voice, web and e-mail alert systems enabling users to contact family members in the event they need assistance. In addition, the service features “scheduled checks” notifying parents when their children arrive home from school.
“AmberWatch Mobile is designed to protect people in harm’s way and to provide peace of mind,” said the AmberWatch Foundation’s chairman and CEO Keith Jarrett. “We are hopeful that this easy-to-use technology will be another tool that will prevent child abduction and other violent crimes before they happen.”
During his BREW 2007 keynote address Thursday, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs announced the company will donate 100 percent of its revenues earned from the BREW-based WaveMarket application to the AmberWatch Foundation.

Navitime Displays Showmanship Again

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:01:31 -0400

By Brian Dolan

KDDI and Navitime have done it again, and just like last year, it appears they anticipated the win. In 2006 when Navitime’s navigation application won the Best Up and Coming BREW Award, the team took the stage wearing T-shirts that spelled out “N-A-V-I-T-I-M-E” across the fronts of the shirts. After winning the award the team turned around to reveal “Thank You” spelled out across the backs. After taking the winning trophy for Best Up and Coming BREW application yet again this year, for its EZ Josyuseki Navi application, the Navitime team turned on the theatrics again. Each team member raised an ornamental fan, which displayed one letter from the word “A-R-I-G-A-T-O,” Japanese for “thank you.” Navitime beat out VCast On the Go and Secure Phone to take the award.

In stark contrast to Navitime’s jubilant showmanship, when Alltel’s Celltop application took the trophy for Best Productivity and Business BREW application, the carrier’s Director of Multimedia Content Scott Moody was caught unaware at the very back of the auditorium. Celltop leverages the BREW platform and uiOne technology to enable users to easily configure the user interface on their mobile phone. When Moody accepted the award, he thanked Qualcomm, Frog Design, Motricity and their OEM partners. Alltel’s Celltop bested a mobile banking application from Brazil’s EverMobile and Weatherbug.

The other BREW Award Winners announced on Thursday were Juice Wireless/JuiceCaster for Best Community Application; AirPlay Network/NBA AirPlay Live for Best Entertainment Application; Xi’an Kingtone Information Technology/Wireless Emergency Command System (Kingeye) for Best Public Service Application.

Best Up and Coming Application
EZ Josyuseki Navi – KDDI/Navitime

Best Business/Productivity Application
Celltop – Alltel Wireless

Best Community Application
JuiceCaster – Juice Wireless

Best Entertainment Application
NBA AirPlay Live – AirPlay Network

Best Public Service Application
Wireless Emergency Command System (Kingeye) – Xi’an Kingtone Information Technology

Immersion: making mobiles more touchy-feely

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:59:12 -0400

By Brian Dolan

Perhaps the biggest weakness of the iPhone is its lack of tactile feedback, according to Immersion’s Director of Mobility Product Management Tim Vetter. The most heralded iPhone competitor, LG’s Prada phone, however, makes use of Immersion’s tactile technology, VibeTonz, which Vetter claims puts it one step ahead of the iPhone’s much-hyped user interface.

To date, Immersion’s bread and butter has been rumble packs for console game controllers, which add another immersive element to gaming by imitating, for example, the vibrations of a race car’s engine. Immersion is now taking what it has learned from console gaming and porting it to mobile games, mobile user interfaces, mobile messaging and other applications.

Instead of sending a rich text message with an emoticon and the message “I love you” to one’s significant other, VibeTonz allows next-gen messaging services to accentuate the message with a vibration that simulates a beating heart. Vetter points out that mobile gaming particularly benefits from the addition of tactile feedback because the mobile phone’s screen size, speaker output and cramped keyboard can make for a diminutive experience. The sense of touch can never be “small.”

Critics of tactile feedback and the pervasive use of vibrations to complement mobile content point to the potential toll such features could have on battery life. Vetter, however, says VibeTonz effects are short-lived and subtle enough that a typical use case for UI, gaming and ringtone augmentation only results in a 2 percent to 3 percent drain on battery life. Also, Immersion’s internal tests show that five years of continual use of the VibeTonz system does not cause a lot of problems to handsets’ hardware.

BREW developers who wish to target applications toward Samsung phones or the Prada phone, which have the VibeTonz hardware installed, can download a dynamic extension that lets them make calls into the VibeTonz system, and leverage the features to create unique interplays between tactile feedback and their offering.

“As the world becomes more virtual,” Vetter says “it becomes more important to add touch back into it, and that’s what we’re doing.”

FusionOne Backup Prevents Content Loss

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:58:25 -0400

By Brian Dolan

Losing or breaking a mobile phone is upsetting, especially for those that consider their handsets to be a next-generation photo album. More than two years ago FusionOne launched a backup service for mobile shutterbugs and now it’s offering an updated version that prevents the loss of expensive mobile content, such as games, short videos, ringtones and full-track songs. Called MightyBackup 3.0, this BREW-based application provides restorative protection for both user-generated and licensed mobile content.
“Now users are investing a lot of money in mobile content and they want that to follow them as well,” said FusionOne’s President and CEO Rick Onyun. “‘Follow’ is the key word. We’re not physically storing and restoring this content. We back up the metadata and are able to tell users: ‘Here’s all the stuff you used to own.’”

According to Onyun, the company doesn’t set the policy for repurchasing licensed content, that’s up to the content owners. “It usually falls into three categories: The user needs to repurchase the content in full, the user gets a discount or the content owner lets the user get the content back for free.” Onyun admits that continually re-buying content would prove irritating, but repurchasing for a nominal fee, especially to pay for the porting service should sit well with consumers, he says.

Licensed content typically falls into two categories: one-time purchases and subscription purchases. MightyBackup 3.0 allows users to regain access to both. Content owners are typically more interested in making money on the one-time purchases, while carriers want to maintain the subscriptions users lose when they switch handsets.

Using BREW makes MightyBackup 3.0 easier for users to find and register, Onyun says. Users can even log onto a website and view the content of their phone from a PC. When a user gets a new phone, they need to download the backup service again and supply their phone number and pin code to get access to their list of missing content. From that list, users can pick and choose which content to restore while viewing the prices. FusionOne has deals with the content owners so the user can repurchase and restore all in one place.

Jacobs keynote addresses state of the BREW nation

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:57:21 -0400

By Jason Ankeny

Forgoing the onstage theatrics and antics of BREW events past, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs got serious during his annual keynote address Thursday, touting the accelerating evolution of the mobile multimedia experience, exploring the potential of fledgling services like social networking and m-payment, and even weighing in on the company’s ongoing patent infringement battle with semiconductor supplier Broadcom.

“Innovations have historically revolved around enhancements in hardware,” Jacobs says. “But to me, when you look at the next generation of communications, it’s not about which technology will rule, but which applications and content.” He returned repeatedly to a credo celebrating “innovation, execution and partnership,” adding “Our vision is based squarely on the successes together we’re experiencing.”

Jacobs spotlighted Qualcomm’s MediaFLO mobile video platform, which he says is ultimately about much more than television. “MediaFLO is core to our vision of making the phone the ultimate convergence device,” he says, citing services like datacasting—broadcasting data via radio waves—as a means to broaden multimedia beyond video and television to deliver real-time news, stocks and weather alerts.

Jacobs also focused on mobile payment services, a hot topic at BREW 2007 in the wake of Verizon Wireless’ new partnership with m-payment services provider Obopay, a deal announced Wednesday. “Over the next few years, traditional retail will continue to expand into digital services,” Jacobs says. “Based on RFID and near-field technologies, consumers can use their phones to replace almost anything they carry in their wallets”—for example, mass-transit passes, hotel keys or airline tickets. He also envisions a mobile payment model shaped by the principles of social networking, with viral distribution as a means to appeal to consumers with coupons and loyalty cards.

Another market high on Jacobs’ list of priorities: healthcare. In May, Qualcomm announced LifeComm, a network that will enable consumers to manage health issues from diet to diabetes on their handsets. “The phone is like a doc in the pocket,” Jacobs says, outlining services including emergency assistance and medication management. “[Health, wellness and fitness] offer an exciting new market for the BREW community.”

From there, Jacobs addressed Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform, which promises ubiquitous broadband access to deliver increased functionality across consumer electronics devices and platforms. “Lack of connectivity is a huge barrier to adoption, so we’re proposing a platform compatible with a wide variety of wireless networks to leverage the network for computing and voice calls in areas where wireline access is unavailable or cost-prohibitive,” Jacobs says. “[Snapdragon represents] ubiquitous connectivity combined with processing performance and long battery life. We’re confident it’s a catalyst for future innovation.”

Jacobs then moved to the white elephant in the room: The International Trade Commission’s recent decision to ban import of 3G handsets employing Qualcomm chips ruled to violate Broadcom patents. “We think the ITC’s decision and remedy are unreasonable and wrong,” Jacobs says. “We will immediately seek an emergency stay, and ask the president to veto ITC decision. But these actions have not distracted us from our focus—we will continue to persevere and execute on our vision.”

Qualcomm, Telephia partner for new metric system

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:52:48 -0400

By Jason Ankeny

Mobile market research firm Telephia announced a partnership with conference host Qualcomm to launch a pair of new tools designed to track mobile content consumption and behaviors. The tools, dubbed MobileView and Applogger, are functional on all new Qualcomm chipsets that support BREW APIs; while MobileView accesses Qualcomm network diagnostic info, Applogger records consumer application and content usage patterns.

“A better understanding of what consumers are doing is required to win in the marketplace,” says Telephia’s Senior Vice President of Business Development David Petersen. “These tools will help drive new product development and drive new revenue and business models.”

According to Petersen, MobileView and Applogger are embedded on Qualcomm chipsets, and ship to OEMs while dormant—“There’s nothing live on the phone recording information on anyone at anytime.” Telephia will then recruit a panel of consumers, offering a financial incentive in exchange for monitoring their handset behaviors—the MobileView and Applogger tools are turned on solely via opt-in service message, and from there, any data collected is aggregated to further eliminate privacy concerns.

“Everything happens in a very consumer privacy-friendly way—we never want anyone to say ‘I didn’t agree to that,’” Petersen says.

MobileView and Applogger promise insight into a host of application and content provider questions, including:

• How many consumers download or sideload an application or title?
• How frequently is an application or content used or played?
• When do titles wear out?
• What is an application’s share of screen time?
• How many ads were viewed during use of an application?
• How many mobile websites did a user visit? How long did they stay? What did they look at?

While the tools currently gather data on the presence of games, music, wallpapers and related content across handsets, Petersen says additional information—e.g., frequency of use, start and stop times, and website and advertisement views—will be accessible only with the cooperation of network operators.

MobileView and Applogger are now shipping to OEMs for integration. “These tools become incredibly important to understanding what consumers are doing,” he says. “Our relationship with Qualcomm allows us very wide penetration into the marketplace.”

Music to your ears: Warner outlines content distribution vision

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:51:29 -0400

By Jason Ankeny

From Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to the Traveling Wilburys, supergroups—i.e., bands of existing bestsellers coming together to ring up even greater sales—have long been a staple of popular music. During his keynote appearance Thursday at BREW 2007, Warner Music Group Senior Vice President of Technology Strategy George White addressed a similar vision for mobile music content, touting a new partnership with conference host Qualcomm to create artist-branded, bundled themes comprising ringtones, wallpapers, full-track songs and games in a single file download.

“Mobile themes give WMG artists another way to deliver rich multimedia experiences to consumers,” White says. He pointed to the success of Japanese operator KDDI’s Chaka Uta Full service, which offers full-track downloads complete with a series of pre-set edit points enabling consumers to create their own ringtones. By contrast, White says, Warner produced more than 200 mobile products and services promoting hip-hop star T.I.’s 2006 debut King—at an average of two minutes of browsing per transaction, a T.I. fan would be forced to spend an eight-hour day simply to download all the mobile content related to the rapper.

“The key is stepping into the new—taking many innovative products and combining them in new ways that leverage mobility and connectivity,” White says. He outlined a series of interrelated products and services designed to expand the user experience across multiple devices and platforms, as well as nurture relationships with consumers beyond the original premium transaction.

For example, a song file could include a prompt to register the download, opening up a stream of content like artist news, videos and related promotional content. In the days, weeks and even months ahead, the consumer would receive new content, services and information as it becomes available, ranging from do-it-yourself ringtones and remixes to a social network spanning all listeners who purchase the content in question. White also explored services exploiting the selling points of each individual platform—e.g., the increased real estate of the PC screen would enable room for content beyond artist videos and photos, like links to a music retail service provider.

“We need to create a seamlessly portable experience to any device,” White says. “The [digital music] experience must be interoperable with all of a fan’s networked devices—in addition, we envision new consumer touch points for months, maybe even a year after [a record’s] release.”

MVNOs Streamline with BREW

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:00:33 -0400

By Brian Dolan

In the highly competitive mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) sector every advantage goes a long way. MVNO Amp’d Mobile selected the BREW platform because it offers an end-to-end solution that provides a catalog of content, plus payment services and reconciliation with developers.

“When you are the carrier, you own 100 percent of the problem if a customer has an issue with their mobile phone,” says Mike McSherry, Amp’d senior vice president, emerging technologies. “And with BREW, an application doesn’t get on the phone unless it has been pre-approved by Qualcomm for the BREW platform. If a customer is using a phone running on the JAVA platform, and they realize that their phone is not working, it could be difficult to resolve if the problem came from a third party application,” McSherry says. “There’s more of a vetting process with BREW applications, and that has a great benefit to carriers, because of the reduced care costs associated with it.”

While some criticize the BREW platform for being too “closed,” MVNOs such as Amp’d note that the BREW ecosystem brings a level of stability desirable to a budding mobile phone operator, virtual or otherwise. However, since it does not allow third-party applications, it also must offer a big portfolio of content and applications.

End-to end-solution
“The big benefit for us--besides the fact that BREW is a holistic platform--is that it enabled us to quickly get an impressive catalog of content to offer to our subscribers,” says Juha Christensen, CEO of Sonopia. “Qualcomm’s ability to work as a hub between the tens of thousands of developers and companies with good content, as well as carriers like us and eventually consumers—makes for a very strong platform.”

Sonopia, which is a mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE), aims to provide individuals and organizations with the tools to create their own branded mobile phone service and build community features associated with it. Because of this, the company needs a large swath of content and tools at the ready. If anyone can become an MVNO through Sonopia, the MVNE needs to be sure it can handle a wide variety of requests.

“We are a micro-segmented carrier looking to serve all these brands which each have an individualized conversation,” Christensen says. “We want to help these brands and organizations narrow the content choices they plan on offering to their constituents. That’s why Qualcomm worked with us to modify their catalog of BREW-approved content to create catalogs that are more relevant to any given new Sonopia user. Rather than millions of content titles, they’ll only have to look through hundreds.”

Custom UI
A complete platform like BREW also ensures each of the working parts coalesce, according to McSherry. The MVNO has banked on compelling content offerings from MTV and other brands targeting the young adult market, but the carrier also recognizes their users will want to find their own content on the mobile Internet.

“We did our entire [user-interface] as a BREW application, while most of the other carriers are still living in a WAP environment,” McSherry says. “Those aren’t nearly as interesting or responsive as our BREW interface, because we customized our browser from the standard BREW mobile shopping catalog. We took the source code and recreated our UI on top to make it much more graphically rich. Now we manage subscriptions at the UI level, which you don’t see in the standard catalog.”

The user interface also offers sophisticated caching. “We’re integrating other services like mobile advertising: You can pull a video down within the interface, right into the shopping catalog,” McSherry says. “As a BREW app you can even have animation for transitions, which you can’t do with WAP.”

During the past year, Amp’d took its UI and product catalog to Canada, making it the first BREW ambassador for the country, according to McSherry. Amp’d and its hybrid MVNO approach to Canada also marked a shift in the company’s expansion plans: The company plans on taking its BREW-based MVNO offerings to Asia next.

In light of recent events, however, some of those plans could be in jeopardy. Earlier this month, Amp’d filed for bankruptcy protection after Verizon Wireless declared default on the MVNO’s wholesale agreement, demanding a $4.5 million payment within ten days.

FrameFree Studio offers BREW extension

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:00:33 -0400

By Nathan Eddy

Motion imagery compression and authoring company FrameFree Technologies announced that its FrameFree Studio animation software will support BREW. Rie Akiyoshi, who is part of FrameFree’s international business development group, says the extensions will be well-suited to mobile game developers, as well as many other creative applications. “This technology perfectly matches with a mobile game application as this extension will help a developer create a unique, interesting and smooth content,” Akiyoshi says. “For example, the extension will make the transition between scenes smoother since our decoder and encoder has developed with the world's most advanced pixel-matching and interpolation engine.”

The extension also will allow developers and publishers to include “cut scenes” in video which can enhance mobile game play. “Using FrameFree, game developers can embed pristine movies without bloating the size of the game,” Akiyoshi says. Developing the Critical Point Filer (CPF) algorithms for the BREW platform was the company’s greatest development challenge, Akiyoshi says as well as not being able to access test phones early enough. The extensions also have several camera phone functions, including movie sharing between users, mash-ups and “anti-jitter and de-blur algorithms” to improve camera phone focus accuracy.

“We believe that working with Qualcomm to bring FrameFree Studio to wireless publishers and developers via the BREW Extension Program is a further illustration of our commitment to the ‘author once, publish anywhere’ concept for digital artists and content creators,” she says. “The quality of BREW enables us to bring our exciting technology to this medium and provide the mobile market immediate access to extremely advanced digital imaging software.”

UPDATE: Rie Akiyoshi is part of Framefree's international business development group, not the head of global marketing and technologies at the company.