Qualcomm brewing in Brazil
By Ben Charny
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
January 22, 2003, 7:15 PM PT
news.com.com
Brazil's largest wireless carrier, Telesp Celular, will sell its customers downloadable software using Qualcomm's Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless, or BREW, technology, Qualcomm said on Wednesday. Paul E. Jacobs, president of Qualcomm's Wireless and Internet Group, did not provide additional details during a conference call with analysts.
Telesp is the fifth carrier to use BREW inside cell phones and networks to sell downloadable ring tones, games or business applications to subscribers. The other BREW carriers are Verizon Wireless, Alltel, KTF in Korea and KDDI in Japan.
Sprint PCS and most of the world's wireless carriers selling downloads use Sun Microsystems' Java programming language. Software written in Java lets a single program run on any device of a certain class, regardless of underlying details such as its operating system or processor.
Analysts including the Zelos Group predict Java will dominate the market, running on 450 million handsets by 2007, or three-quarters of those that ship that year. Qualcomm's BREW is so far not a contender, according to Zelos.
More than 100 million Java-enabled phones have been sold worldwide, according to estimates from Nokia. There are about 3.2 million BREW users worldwide, Jacobs said Wednesday during the conference call. |
