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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: samim anbarcioglu who wrote (8005)	3/1/2001 11:08:02 PM
From: Ibexx	Respond to of 196652

Wireless Web History In The Making PHILLIPS BUSINESS INFORMATION, 3/1/2001 6:06:00 PM Mar. 01, 2001 (Wireless Today, Vol. 5, No. 38 via COMTEX) -- By Malcolm Spicer, mspicer@pbimedia.com Wireless application platforms in development by Qualcomm [QCOM] and Sun Microsystems [SUNW], through a partnership with Openwave Systems [OPWV], could spur wireless Web usage in the United States. Open standards platforms such as those coming from Qualcomm, Sun and Openwave will allow wireless carriers to add applications to, or remove them from their Web-based service offerings without repackaging their entire Internet package. Existing platforms lock carriers into offering specific sets of applications until they develop replacement packages. When applications that service providers are offering aren't catching on with their customers, open standards platforms will allow them to get rid of those and add different choices. That's much easier than asking subscribers to buy new phones in order to use new applications. And that's much more likely to encourage subscribers to stay with their service providers. CDMA carriers KDDI in Japan and Korea Telecom's [KTC] Freetel will launch binary runtime environment for wireless (BREW)-enabled services in the third quarter, Jeremy James, marketing director for Qualcomm Internet Services, told Wireless Today. Services will be available before the end of the year from Verizon Wireless and Leap International Wireless [LWIN] in the United States and from Pegaso Telecommunications in Mexico. Sun and Openwave's new platform should be available to carriers in the second quarter this year, said Dan Downey, wireless and mobile technology market analyst for the Yankee Group. "It's basically a new way of accessing the wireless Web," Downey said. "In the past, it's been basically you log in via a micro-browser and surf different text-enabled Web sites. That basically has not caught on in the United States." Peter O'Kelly, senior analyst at the Patricia Seybold Group, said Qualcomm's BREW applications platform will make it easier for application vendors to develop tools to work through the platform. Plus, it lets carriers offer access to the applications while also offering more applications. "Those are two key things that are going to be of value to people," O'Kelly said. Existing opportunities for wireless users to download Web-based applications are limited and difficult, he added. "It's nice to have the opportunity to go to a virtual mall or a portal to review and download those applications," O'Kelly said. "What BREW enables is for the users to use on their handsets what they've taken for granted on there desktop," James said. "With that capability comes a situation in which the market can truly drive what applications win and lose." An application ready to work on the BREW platform is fusionOne's SyncML- based technology for synchronizing data between wireless devices and desktop computing tools. "It is a very important requirement to every carrier out there right now," said David Multer, fusionOne's vice president of engineering and chief technical officer. San Jose, Calif.-based fusionOne has signed on nearly 600,000 users for its Sync service through direct sales or through enterprise customers after six months of operations. Offering its synchronization application through BREW will open up the company's market, Multer said. "Our goal is really to connect as many devices as we possibly can so users can experience the same data wherever they happen to work with it, " he said. Sun and Openwave's application platform development differs from Qualcomm's by supporting applications formatted in both Java and wireless application protocol technologies. "The mobile Internet demands a new vision of standards-based development and fully networked operating systems," said Don Listwin, president and CEO of Openwave. Sun and Openwave, however, also are aiming for wireless carriers as the market for their platform. "It is basically a statement that Sun is going to take on the BREW platform," Downey said. The first version of the BREW platform will work with CDMA networks. BREW platforms for GSM and TDMA networks also are in development, though no timetable has been set for rollouts, James said. Applications from games to multi-device synchronization capabilities built to work on the platform and offered by carriers will be downloadable to Web-enabled CDMA handsets. The Bottom Line Open standards platforms are likely to generate plenty of enthusiastic reviews from wireless users with more access to more applications, but the big winners in the deployment of these platforms are likely to be application vendors and service providers. Vendors will have opportunities to introduce applications to much larger markets. "What we're trying to do is to open the door wide to developers to give them access to this kind of platform," James said. And carriers will have platforms enabling dynamic maintenance of their wireless Web offerings. Mobile operators will be less likely to lose customers to competitors offering different Web-based tools when they can quickly add the same choices to their services. Ibexx