(keitai-l) Re: BREW vs J2ME: money vs standards

From: Benedict Evans <inherent_at_hotmail.com>
Date: 04/19/01
Message-ID: <LAW2-F1407jtrSByh130000dd2b@hotmail.com>
Surely the biggest problem with BREW is that handsets will refuse to run 
BREW applications unless they've been certified and digitally signed by 
Qualcomm. (They say that they'll use third party testing agencies and charge 
cost.)

Now, imagine you've got a big slug of VC money, and you're running a mobile 
gaming site with two dozen games. Every week you want to add a game and make 
bug fixes or tweaks to half-a-dozen others. BUT, you can't put bloody 
*anything* on your site until you've sent it off to Qualcomm, waited for 
Qualcomm send it to one of these agencies, argued the toss about whether 
you're conformed to the spec, paid the fee and got them to send you the 
digitally signed file. I.e. two week lead-time between finishing the app and 
being able to use it, even assuming everything the system works as 
advertised. Is it just me, or does this sound insane?

BREW seems like it might work quite well for operators putting applications 
on the handsets - custom browsers or messaging programs, say. But to use it 
for *content*?! How well would Java have taken off it no Java applicaion 
would run without being individually approved by Sun?
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Received on Thu Apr 19 09:55:12 2001