MediaFLO

Qualcomm builds a Plaza full of widgets

Mike Dolan — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:31:25 -0400

By Dan O'Shea

During a press conference yesterday, Qualcomm gave greater detail about how it is further feeding the open mobile Internet frenzy with Plaza, a new framework featuring collected, certified catalogs of mobile widgets-the increasingly-popular thin Internet clients that reside on mobile devices.

BREW and non-BREW carriers alike will be able to present "widget walls" giving users "quicker and easier personalized access to the Internet," while allowing carriers to take the lead in presenting it to them, said Andrew Gilbert, executive vice president and president of QIS/MediaFLO Technologies and Qualcomm Europe. "There are other widget platforms out there, but what makes Plaza different is that Plaza is very purposely focused on the traditional wireless value chain. We're keeping the application evolution in the hands of the companies that know customers the best. Our technology platform aggregates a number of developed widgets so that phones can be pre-loaded with them-the understanding being that the operator has pre-selected the widgets based on user demographics and customer information."

Gilbert said Qualcomm is working with several carriers to determine how those widget walls will be presented. Yet, end users still will have a high degree of choice in the matter as well. "The individual subscriber can add or remove widgets, pulling them from the operator catalog," Gilbert said.

He acknowledged that users could still go off-deck and download other widgets not included in those carrier catalogs. But, they will not have passed Qualcomm's certification muster. "The opportunity here is really to give the operator a trusted widget platform to offer their customers," Gilbert said. "They can take control of their own applications destiny. For the end user, as long as you have a Web browser, you're good to go. This is not tied to a particular SDK."

Also at the press conference, Steve Sprigg, senior vice president of engineering for Qualcomm, offered more details about the new BREW Mobile Platform. Sprigg said BMP helps Qualcomm fulfill its goals of expanding the BREW developer community and pushing advanced capabilities traditionally available only to high-end phones out to mass-market mobile devices. "We've added more APIs and have made BREW more modular and scalable," Sprigg said "We've simplified license agreements for developers and we're providing them with more source code."

Sprigg also said the previously announced teaming of Qualcomm and Adobe will see more BREW resources passed to Adobe developers. "We're bringing two developer communities together, uniting the Web community and the mobile community, bringing millions of developers to hundreds of millions of handsets."

Datebook:

Thu, 22 May 2008 06:59:57 -0400

Wednesday, May 28

5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Happy Hour in the Partner Pavilion

5:30 p.m. BREW Developer Awards in the Partner Pavilion

7:30 p.m. BREW Welcome Reception, Children's Museum

Thursday, May 29

9:30 a.m. Beyond Voice: Evolving, Expanding and Opening the Wireless Ecosystem with Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm

10:00 a.m. Keynote address with a Verizon executive

7:00 p.m. BREWFEST featuring the band Live in the Gaslamp district

Friday, June 22

9:30 a.m. BREW and Beyond -- Opening Up the Internet with Andrew Gilbert, EVP and President of QIS/MediaFLO and Qualcomm Europe.

11 a.m. Bringing the Internet Ecosystem to Mobile Phones with Carols Fernandez Casares, head of data services marketing at Telefonica Spain

On the Hot Seat with BREW's Andrew Gilbert

Wed, 21 May 2008 16:32:05 -0400

BREW's Andrew Gilbert

On the eve of the annual BREW confab in San Diego, Sue Marek, editor in chief of FierceDeveloper talked to Andrew Gilbert, executive vice president and president of QIS/MediaFLO Technologies and Qualcomm Europe about the latest developments in the BREW platform.

FierceDeveloper: You recently transitioned into the role of executive vice president of QIS and MediaFLO Technologies and Qualcomm Europe. How has the change been so far?

Gilbert: It is a new role. I've been at Qualcomm for a few years through the acquisition of Flarion. I spent the past few years running the European division. I had a huge exposure to QIS and MediaFLO because I was leading the operations of those two groups as they tried to develop out into Europe. I had a lot to do with Telecom Italia selecting the BREW gaming solution and O2 with their use of the BREW interface. Recently, I worked with Hutchison the BREW platform. So I have been groomed on the BREW way. The opportunity to take over running the entire organization was a fantastic opportunity and an honor.

Since then, I have spent a lot of time in San Diego. I'm based and live in the U.K. In the early stages, as I started to reach out and meet with customers and the vendors and developers, the first question was why have someone run this from the U.K.? But in reality the business has been global. The U.S. is a huge part of the business and a great success, but the appeal of BREW has spread globally.

FierceDeveloper: Verizon is one of your biggest BREW customers and they have been talking about their Open Development Initiative. How does BREW fit into that?

Gilbert: Open is such an open word. What does it really mean? I think BREW is a very successful model and others are trying to recreate that model, like Apple. That is a very similar model to BREW but they even own and run the device. In that sense BREW is much more open. BREW is applicable across any air interface, across any BREW-enabled device and with any operator that wants to be a BREW operator. It's developing now to create opportunities for a more open approach to how content is being delivered on BREW. BREW Zones is the opportunity for us to create an environment where developers can deliver content into a safe zone through a willing operator to a subscriber. A subscriber could go onto a BREW developer site or a BREW developer partner site, choose a game they like and download it across BREW Zones, across a BREW operator and onto their phone even though it may not be a standard BREW on catalog game. For those operators that want a more open environment, BREW Zones enables them to do that. It opens them up to a wider community. That is one illustration of how BREW is becoming more open.

Another would be how we are trying to add new features and functionality to BREW. These are features that can be deployed standalone or they can be deployed as part of BREW. Our recent acquisition of Xiam in Ireland is one example. Xiam has a product that is a profile and recommendation engine that allows an operator to add value to the subscriber experience by using the history of what they look at as a guide to recommending other content that is relevant. How does that tie into BREW? This will be an integrated part of the BREW solution and it will not only recommend content as part of the BREW content and BREW portal but also other content. It's designed to support recommendations from other portals that the operator might have. This is another piece of openness.

FierceDeveloper: How is BrandXtend -the off-portal part of BREW--progressing?

Gilbert: With BrandXtend we have announced Major League Baseball as a customer and we have been focused on making that a success. We are not in a position to announce any other clients at this stage.

BrandXtend is an ideal example of my over-arching strategy: any content across any network delivered to any device. We are doing that today with Major League Baseball.

FierceDeveloper: Tell me about the hosted services business. This was publicly announced earlier this year. Do you see a lot of growth potential from this model?

Gilbert: I do see this as having growth potential. There are different requirements for different operators. We saw an opportunity when Midwest Wireless was acquired by Alltel so we purchased the managed services business. I've met with the BREW managed service customers and they are happy that we offer this service. We have scaled down the power of BREW to these smaller operators and that is valuable to the operators and the subscribers who might not otherwise get access to this service.

I think there is an opportunity to take this to other operators that are emerging so they can deliver this type of service.

I will bring on stage one of the managed service operators to talk about their experience.

FierceDeveloper: Can you give me any hints at what Qualcomm will be talking about at BREW?

Gilbert: We will talk about BREW Zones and Xiam. We will also talk about a package of improvements that we are putting together for our developers to help improve the economics and the time to market for getting their products out. We will announce a number of improvements so developers have an even better experience with the BREW ecosystem.

FierceDeveloper: How is the BREW conference evolving?

Gilbert: I don't want to disenfranchise anyone. We have core and loyal group of operators and developers. We have seen great support from these companies. But we also see a broader world out there. We are bringing new people to Qualcomm like Xiam and we are bringing in new technologies such as widgets and new speakers such as Telefonica. There are more countries represented here than ever before. It's much bigger than just games and content.

QUICKLINKS: Qualcomm files $240 million loss on MediaFLO; Palm closes stores, offers cash rebates for Treos;

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 06:59:55 -0500

> Qualcomm files $240 million loss on MediaFLO. FierceMobileContent

> Palm closes stores, offers cash rebates for Treos. FierceWireless

> Sybase 365 launches AvantGo for Symbian smartphones. Release

> Motorola, CSR to launch enhanced GPS industry forum. Release

> Interactive television software developer Zodiac debuts mobile content search engine optimized for televisions and web browsers. FierceMobileContent

Breaking up BREW: How is the platform evolving?

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:01:20 -0400

BREW is no longer just an end-to-end solution and the folks at Qualcomm will be touting BREW's evolution and its many different uses. In particular, expect to hear a lot about uiOne, BREW's interface initiative. Carriers want personalization and uiOne lets the customer have control over their content and customize the type of content they want to see. Qualcomm's uiOne technology was launched just two years after the firm purchased Trigenix, which provides the user interface technologies and tools for uiOne. Carriers such as Sprint, Alltel and O2 are using uiOne and will be talking about it at BREW.

Also, expect to hear more about BREW's growing ecosystem of carriers, handset makers and developers. Qualcomm Internet Services and MediaFLO Technologies Executive Vice President and President Peggy Johnson says BREW has more than 65 operator customers and is available in 32 countries. In addition, there are 48 device maker building BREW handsets. Here's another key statistic Qualcomm will be touting: QIS announced in March that BREW had paid more than $1 billion to developers and publishers.

QUICKLINKS: Rumor: Infospace may sell games division; Flickr launches new mobile site; Much more...

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 19:01:35 -0500

Rumor: Infospace may sell games division. Blog

Flickr launches new mobile site. Website

Google says carriers want to block its maps. FierceWireless

Samsung develops super-slim LCD screen. Article

Hack your Samsung Blackjack for increased battery life. Blog

Ten reasons every programmer should learn C. Blog (via ceo)

Rumor: T-Mobile is testing MediaFLO technology.

QUICKLINKS: Rumor: iTunes phone 100-song limit cracked; Top 10 mobile sessions at JavaOne; Much more...

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 20:00:50 -0400

Rumor: Crack the 100-song limit on iTunes phones. Forum

Top 10 mobile sessions at JavaOne. Article

Mobile phones are a catalyst for social change in Africa. Blog

A consumer-centric overview of the Japanese mobile phone market. Blog

dotMobi opens up domain registrations to telecoms. Blog

FCC approves MediaFLO for first deployment. Blog

So that's where all those old N-Gages went. Blog

QUALCOMM to develop DVB-H chips

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:01:36 -0500

In a somewhat surprising move, QUALCOMM has announced that it will begin creating chips that support DVB-H, a mobile video standard that competes directly with its own MediaFLO technology. "It doesn't always have to be a QUALCOMM technology that's deployed for us to benefit," said CEO Paul Jacobs. Article

Editor's Corner: Entertaining CTIA

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 20:01:40 -0400

Mobile entertainment is hot. ESPN launched a slick new MVNO complete with a slick new phone and streaming sports updates. Old-school hardware company Sandisk found a way to position itself as a content distributor by bundling content (and DRM) with its flash cards. VeriSign, a company that was once synonymous with Internet infrastructure, has recently been pushing ringtones and SMS alerts. Incidentally, eBay just bought VeriSign's Internet payment unit for $370 million.

Despite the practically dot-com level of hype surrounding mobile entertainment, I'm not yet ready to call it The Next Big Thing for the cellphone industry. First, there are some very obvious problems with mobile gaming. To paraphrase legendary Nintendo designer Shigero Miyamoto, why would anyone want to play games on a cell phone when they buy Game Boy Micro? The pocket-sized Game Boy costs $100 and plays games much better than an $800 smartphone. Most cell phones simply lack the battery life and user interface necessary to play quality games.

Likewise, I think the cellphone industry is overestimating the demand for mobile TV. MediaFLO, MobiTV, goTV, and all the other mobile streaming video solutions look very cool and are technically very impressive; but once the "gee whiz" factor wears off, all you're left with is a pocket-sized TV. Pocket TVs have been around for a long time--Radio Shack sells them for under $100--but few people buy them aside from truckers and sports fanatics. One reason for this: Americans love big TVs, and few of them will voluntarily watch their favorite program on a 1.5-inch cell phone screen. Mobile video may well become huge in the next few years, but it will be driven by user-created content and, if certain ad agencies have their way, humorous viral commercials.

So where is the real innovation going to take place? Mobile enterprise applications, RAD, mobile commerce, and new communications and networking paradigms. Read next week's column to find out why. - Eli

Editor's Corner: CTIA IT 2005 Wrap-up

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 20:01:40 -0400

This week I'm playing catch up with all the announcements that came out of CTIA IT 2005 last week in San Francisco. (I'm also still recovering from FierceWireless' wildly successful party on Wednesday -- about 1,000 people showed up!)

One hot topic at CTIA was MediaFLO, QUALCOMM's high-speed media network. The network was first announced last year, but now things really seem to be taking off. There are rumors that both Sprint Nextel and Korea's KTF are looking into the network for future offerings. Take a look at the phone in action. MediaFLO is expected to be commercially available by mid-2006.

Another cool--and unexpected--new device was Medis' prototype disposable fuel cell. They say the little black box can power a mobile phone for six to eight weeks, can be used on an airplane and will cost under $20. The company plans to launch in the first half of 2006, and a refillable version is in the works. I wonder how it compares to LG's fuel cell.

Stay tuned next week for more updates from the show and a retrospective on CTIA and the direction of the wireless industry. -Eli