PalmSource Joins CTIA and Announces New Wireless Services

PalmSource has joined CTIA's Wireless Internet Caucus (WIC) and Leadership Council. The company has also formed new relationships that further align Palm OS with the needs of leading wireless operators and their customers. PalmSource announced deals to bring the Qualcomm BREW platform, to enable wireless delivery of Palm OS applications and is working with Spontaneous Technology to develop secure wireless hotsync's via the sVPN solution.

PalmSource has signed a memorandum of understanding with QUALCOMM to allow over-the-air delivery of Palm OS applications to wireless Palm Powered devices using QUALCOMM's BREW platform. Furthermore, PalmSource and Spontaneous Technology will collaborate to enable secure wireless HotSync of data on Palm Powered devices via the Spontaneous Virtual Private Network (sVPN) solution.

CTIA's Wireless Internet Caucus (WIC) and Leadership Council
As a member of CTIA's Wireless Internet Caucus and Leadership Council, PalmSource will work with other industry leaders to accelerate wireless growth in the United States. WIC meets several times a year to find common solutions to the challenges facing the wireless industry and its customers. Albert Chu, vice president of business development, will represent PalmSource in the WIC Leadership Council, which serves as the organization's governing body.

QUALCOMM's BREW platform
With more than 17,000 commercial applications and 10,000 eBooks created for Palm Powered devices -- far more than for any other mobile platform -- this joint solution is a benchmark for the booming software distribution market that will benefit operators, developers and users alike. The BDS is a fundamental component to enabling a wireless ecosystem for developers, operators and handset manufacturers - managing the over-the-air delivery, billing and payment of wireless applications. This agreement enables Palm OS application developers to also take advantage of this efficient way to manage over-the-air distribution and payment for applications onto Palm Powered smartphones, while creating additional revenue opportunities for wireless operators. This powerful combination will make it much more convenient for users to buy and install Palm OS software to their Palm Powered devices.

"Enabling Palm Powered devices with the BDS will provide operators with a compelling way to differentiate their services and increase revenue, and will give them access to the world's largest library of Palm OS applications," said David Nagel, president and chief executive officer of PalmSource.

Deployments of the BREW solution continue as operators throughout the world join Verizon Wireless and ALLTEL in the United States, KTF in South Korea, KDDI in Japan, and China Unicom in commercializing BREW-based services.

Spontaneous Technology
PalmSource, Inc and Spontaneous Technology, Inc. today announced a collaboration to develop, with intent to co-market, software that enables Palm Powered users to connect to corporate computing networks wirelessly. These solutions make it easier for mobile operators to give their customers secure wireless access to enterprise applications.

SponTec's Virtual Private Network (sVPN) software will be integrated with HotSync®, the Palm OS software that communicates between a handheld and a desktop computer. This combination will give enterprise customers access to corporate applications and enterprise data behind the firewall from any wireless Palm Powered device anywhere at any time through a mobile operator's 2.5G/3G wide area data network. Because any Palm OS application that syncs can work with sVPN, wireless access can be rolled out quickly and easily. sVPN will be available in Palm OS supported languages for those companies that choose to deploy this solution to employees around the globe.

"Enabling secure HotSync for wireless users will provide mobile operators opportunities to generate new business with enterprise customers," said Albert Chu, vice president of business development, PalmSource. "Enterprise customers will experience an increase in productivity by being able to wirelessly and securely access mission-critical enterprise data via smartphones and other mobile devices.”

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Is nothing sacred?

MV-Jon @ 3/18/2003 11:37:02 AM #
I use Palm because development of applications has a low barrier to entry. There are plenty of free tools and documentation and there are not really any fees. Now here comes BREW. BREW charges a fee to do compatability testing for your app. They also charge a hefty fee for the compiler tools. Last I looked the RealView compiler tools cost about $1,500 or so. Then to top it all off, the whole SDK requires the use of Microsoft Visual Studio since it is a plugin for it.

I wish Palm put half as much effort on building a good J2ME(Java 2 Micro Edition) environment as they will end up putting into this BREW stuff. Then Java programmers could easily create cross-platform apps.

--Jon

RE: Is nothing sacred?
Michael Mace @ 3/18/2003 12:25:33 PM #
Just to be sure no one misunderstands, there are two things called Brew. There's Brew the software distribution mechanism, and Brew the software development platform. Our agreement with Qualcomm is to use the Brew distribution and billing infrastructure (which is extremely well designed IMO) to sell and deliver native PalmOS apps to wireless Palm OS devices. You don't have to change tools or anything. PalmSource is working the certification process with Qualcomm (details TBA).

Thanks for the feedback on Java.

Mike
CCO, PalmSource

Palm, Inc.

RE: Is nothing sacred?
Fammy @ 3/18/2003 12:39:11 PM #
I too as I developer would love to see more Java support (perhaps a runtime bundled with the device/OS).

Palm += Java;

_____
Fammy

RE: Is nothing sacred?
MV-Jon @ 3/18/2003 1:38:07 PM #
Mike - thanks for clearing that up. As a loyal Palm user for the last five years I got startled. I thought I saw the begining of the dark side :)

I really do think Palm is missing the boat on Java though. With Java becoming more and more popular for enterprise server application use, client use is sure to grow as well.

When it comes to handhelds Palm seems to be behind in this crucial area. The Zaurus has a pretty solid JVM. Hell, even the PocketPC *yuck* has better Java support than Palm.

--Jon

RE: Is nothing sacred?
Token User @ 3/18/2003 2:15:58 PM #
Having developerd commercially for both BREW and PalmOS, the similarities between the API sets are striking. But aside from that, as a developer, the BREW distribution platform provides a well managed means for the distribution of software, and more importantly, a means for the developers to actually get paid for their apps.

The certification process for BREW is painful (luckily, we were able to spend a lot of time in Qualcomm's BREW labs getting the apps to a point that they were more than stable for certification). One thing that BREW certified apps do guarrantee though is that they provide a minimum level of stability and functionality - something that is largely missing in the PalmOS environment, and is a definate requirment by cellular carriers for software loaded onto smartphones. This will become increasingly important as converged devices become more prevalent.

~ "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DV ~

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