Benedict Evans contends that:
> 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. ...
>
> 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, .... [and]
> ....got them to send you the
> digitally signed file. .... Is it just me, or does this sound insane?
That does sound insane for rapid, public, content-driven growth - i.e., the
Internet, the Web. But my (currently hazy) understanding of Qualcomm's
strategy here is that...well, they want to make money or something. ;-)
Seriously, what you have framed here as a horrific hassle (which it would
be for getting games out fast) might, in fact, be the sine qua non of doing
business in the corporate-applications market that Qualcomm is targeting.
> 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?
Um...not the best analogy, given that Java delivered over the Web went
over like a lead balloon.
Code-as-content - with the arguable exception of cute Javascript hacks
and games - seems like it just doesn't fly if the code can't get its hands
on
all kinds of user-privileged resources. Which is a security risk. Bad
enough
when it's your personal data, but what if the mission-critical app is
running
on thousands of corporate-use phones.
That seems to be the lesson to be learned from the evident dearth of
killer applets.
So anyway, if you DO get a big slug of VC money to do mobile-phone
games, why not develop iApplis in preparation for the i-mode introduction
in the U.S.?
-m
leap@gol.com
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Thu Apr 19 11:54:59 2001