re: Mobile Java Coming to Europe this year
>> Java Phones Arrive In Europe For Early Adopters
Valerie Thompson
Jan 15 2002
The first European over-the-air (OTA) Java download services have begun to appear. There are still issues that need to be ironed out.
By the virtue of being home to Siemens - the first telecommunications equipment manufacturer to launch a GSM Java-enabled phone (SL 45i) in Europe - Germany is leading the way in mobile Java services, namely with Jamba.
Jamba is the default mobile portal for customers of Debitel and several consumer electronics retailers.
Elsewhere, Telenor Mobile’s portal, Djuice, is running a trial offering free games to its subscribers with content from Motorola. Nextel, the leader in the US market, is also running a trial using Motorola content. Japan is ahead worldwide, with its full-scale roll out of the Appli service from NTT DoCoMo in Japan.
Operators are favoring mobile Java because of its potential to generate revenue and ease differentiation from competitors. “Operators are going to differentiate themselves through content and J2ME is the way to do it in the future,” Markus Kassulke, of Handy-Games AG.
Java applications and games (it is primarily games at the moment) also represent the “premium” content category targeted at a number of market segments, such as executives who choose business oriented applications and adult games.
“By the end of 2002, ten to twenty more operators in Europe will be running commercial Java services,” predicts Bengt Carlström, CEO, Digimob, a vendor of mobile Java enabling software and hardware.
Developers and software vendors liked the idea of Java in the first place because it is (supposed to be) write-once-go-anywhere. The standards J2ME, CDLC, and MIDP are supposed to ensure that.
For end users, wireless Java is supposed to release them from being dictated by the phone manufacturers, enabling them to increase or personalize the functionality of mobile phones and handhelds via downloads.
Jamba And Other Players
At the moment owners of the SL45, can pay 100 DM to upgrade their phones to enable Java. According to Jamba, Siemens SL45 owners represent 30% of the German mobile phone user population. Jamba charges 2 to 3 Euros per download. And each download takes about 2 minutes. Another major German mobile portal, T-motion, is expected to bring Java download services online by CEBIT 2002.
In addition, German operator D2 also charges similar prices per download for games, although they are not J2ME games. D2 uses a proprietary game platform only available on Sagem and Philips phones sourced from French technology vendor in-fusio SA.
in-fusio’s CEO, Yann Mondon, was able to convince D2 that selling games to subscribers who are using high-end Java phones is not the way to go. “Not too many teenagers can afford 700 to 1000 DM for a new mobile phone,” says Mondon, referring to the cost of an SL45i without a subsidy from the mobile network operator.
Hurdles To Overcome
Operators will eventually have to invest in “provisioning platforms”, that is, the server and software infrastructure that enables users securely download Java applications to their mobile phones over the air (OTA). The early stage deployments at Jamba and Djuice are not full scale, commercial rollouts. They are relying on temporary technology solution with very limited content from Motorola.
Jamba, in its rush to be first to market with Java downloads, launched the service without testing the games fully and without taking measures to protect the copyright of the games developers. As a result, it took some heavy criticism from the industry on this. The lesson: Operators must protect the copyrights of the games vendors.
“Quality content developers won’t make their games available to Jamba or any other operator that does not guarantee that copyrights are protected,” says Kassulke, adding that copyright protection is not a big deal to include in a download services.
In the future, operators will be offering dozens of applications and games for subscribers and they will have an industry-scale “provisioning” infrastructure - to support the heavy traffic that the services are expected to generate.
The operators are also going to have to figure out how to support the payments, ordering, and customer support required to offer Java download services.
Defining The Rules Of The Game
Will revenue sharing or other types of business models continue to be the norm? “Java is so new in the mobile world that the business could go in any direction,” says Steven Hartley, an analyst at ARC Group, a market research firm that covers mobile technology
Handset manufacturers are also making Java applications available on the Web. Both Motorola and Siemens have online shops for Java games and application bundles, taking payment for the downloads via credit card.
Handset manufacturers’ developer programs ensure a range of applications is available to demonstrate the features of their new Java phones. But they also “expect to generate new revenue streams with those applications, especially in the enterprise or corporate market,” says ARC Group’s Hartley. Analysts speculate that Nokia is in a good position to sell downloads and special applications for its phones via the Club Nokia forum.
Fragmentation Threatens New Java World
The idea of write once and play anywhere, the Java industry mantra, is hardly the case when it comes to mobile Java.
There are as many SDKs (software developer’s kits) as there are phone and handset manufacturers. Bill Day’s web site, a hot spot for wireless developers, lists more than ten software developer kits (SDK) for mobile Java .
This kind of fragmentation was not supposed to happen. Ovum warned of the threat earlier this year in a report. “Either the current level of fragmentation of the current wireless Java pioneers is reduced through heavy pressure from the Java Community Process members responsible for the wireless Java specifications, or the whole wireless Java value proposition is bust,” says Neil Ward-Dutton, Senior Research Analyst at Ovum.
There is a need for device specific development because “display and screen controls are unique for each manufacturer’s phones,” says Kassulke. It requires custom coding to get the Java applications to display with good quality resolution, control, and consistency.
So far developers have shown a willingness to develop applications once and then tweak them for each mobile phone manufacturers version of Java, according to Ward-Dutton.
A Peek Into The Java Future
The market research firms are churning out their usual forecasts for the growth of wireless Java. ARC Group predicts that by 2003, 421 million handsets will be Java enabled. “Such rapid growth will continue until Java becomes ubiquitous in 2006, with over 1 billion handsets incorporating the technology around the world,” says ARC.
“It is the first time in my experience that all the players in the supply chain openly support a new technology. The last time I saw it was when the industry rallied around GSM,” says Hartley. But mass-market rollouts are not expected before CEBIT 2002.
Once the copyright protection for content providers, management of provisioning services, and standardization or interoperability of the Java SDKs hurdles are worked out, the wireless Java market will be really perking.
Valerie Thompson is a freelance business and technology journalist, specialized in emerging networking and computing topics. She lives in Zurich, Switzerland. << |
