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Distilling market noise into market sense.

Capuchin: Sony Ericsson strikes back in the Application Environment…is it a strike? What does it mean for the development platforms fragmentation?September 10 2008

[SonyEricsson is promoting a new Application Environment mixing Java ME and Adobe Flash Lite: Capuchin. Blogger Thomas Menguy tries to describe it and evaluate what "yet a new" development platform means to the industry ].

Sony Ericsson had a nice webinar last Thursday, interesting held through Adobe E-Seminar:

"Flash Lite meets Java ME on Sony Ericsson phones with Project Capuchin".

At least now we have some information about Capuchin, and I’ll sum it up for our beloved busy executives:

• A technology that allows developers to make the UI using Flash Lite and code the business logic and access to the platform services with Java (ME).
• A development environment with PC based tools (Adobe CS plugin for flash and Eclipse plugin for Java), simulators and a specific runtime embedded in SEMC phones.
• The deployment is done using the well in place Java deployment environment (jar are used, same signature, etc).

Here is first a transcript of the capuchin webcast, then as a conclusion I’ll throw out my thoughts about this and its impact on the industry (if you are still there…).

Project Capuchin Web Cast transcript

Flash  Lite from an SEMC perspective

Java ME from and SEMC perspective

Pros

• Tools
• Community
• books, forums, tutorials

Pr

Application Environments: Order from ChaosAugust 26 2008

[Flash, Web Runtime, OSX, widgets, Java engines, Python.. the array of software platforms is chaotic to say the least. Research Director Andreas Constantinou digs deeper into application environments, explains who’s what and identifies 5 clear market trends].

Talk in the mobile industry is often peppered with software mega-brands; Google, Adobe, Microsoft, Linux (see earlier article on the 7 centres of gravity). After a long 7 years since the introduction of smarter mobile phones, software brand names like these are making a splash into the mobile phone scene.

But the array of software platforms for mobile phones keeps growing.. and gets more and more entangled by the month, as new platforms surface. Of particular interest are Application Environments (AEs), the software layer which enables developers to develop, deploy and execute their applications on a mobile phone. Here I attempt to shed some light into the darker corners of the AE space, based on a similar presentation I gave at Informa’s Handsets World conference in Berlin in June 2008. For access to the full presentation see the end of the article.

A very diverse range of application env

Carnival of the Mobilists #133July 21 2008

 Welcome to the 133rd edition of the Carnival of the Mobilists! This week’s Carnival is hosted by VisionMobile.

This week there are quite a few thought pieces and observations worth reading. The iPhone 3G has kept most bloggers busy, but it’s refreshing to see the diversity of topics covered, from challenges in modelling mobile broadband subscriptions to axioms of user interface design. This is trully mobile biodiversity!

Starting with the iPhone posts, Justin Oberman at the MOpocket blog recounts his experiences on the appaling battery life of the iPhone 3G… so appaling that to save battery life Apple suggests you can turn off 3G, location services, push email and 3rd party applications. That’s when technology innovation fails - you buy a new iPhone 3G, not to use any of the new features.

C. Enrique Ortiz at his Mobility Weblog reflects on last week’s news that the iTunes Apps Store saw 10m downloads in just 3 days and makes a very sharp observation;  people WILL download applications, if the problem of discove

The 7 centres of gravity in mobileJuly 21 2008

[The first half of 2008 took the mobile industry by storm.. Nokia+Trolltech+Symbian, Android, BREW+Flash, Adobe Open Screen, LiMo devices.. As the dust settles, Research Director Andreas Constantinou looks at how the mobile landscape is shaping around 7 centres of gravity].

The first 6+ months of 2008 were the most turbulent in the entire history of the mobile industry. In November 2007 Google unveiled Android, in January 2008 Nokia announced the acquisition of Trolltech, in February 2008 LiMo announced the first compliant devices, in May 2008 Adobe announced the Open Screen Project, in May 2008 Qualcomm announced that BREW would be embedding Flash, in June 2008 Nokia announced the Symbian acquisition and in July 2008 Apple unveiled iPhone 3G and the AppStore.

As the dust is clearing after the storm, a new landscape is unveiling in the mobile industry; one where the balance of power is concentrating around 7 centres of gravity: Adobe, Apple, Google, LiMo, Microsoft, Nokia and Qualcomm. In other words, the industry is transitioning from a horizontal structure of operating system offerings circa 2002 to a vertical structure of complete offerings circa 2008 (as all industries do, based on the

Nokia and Symbian to become one; royalty-free, open source roadmapJune 24 2008

[Nokia celebrates Symbian’s 10 year anniversary with an acquisition and a royalty-free, open source roadmap for S60. Research Director Andreas Constantinou distills the ramifications of this major industry announcement]

In typical British style of understatement,  Symbian announced the Symbian Foundation in celebration of the company’s anniversary since its foundation in 1998. Ten years later, having shipped 200 million devices across 235 models from the top-5 OEMs and built an ecosystem of 4 million developers, Symbian now undergoing a major transformation process.

The facts
- Nokia is to acquire Symbian Limited with closure expected by the end of 2008, subject to regulatory approval. On closure, all Symbian employees will become Nokia employees.
- Nokia will be spending around EUR 260 million to buy the remaining Symbian shares from Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Panasonic, Siemens and most likely Samsung. This is about 2.5x of what Nokia paid to acquire Trolltech and about 20x less than what it paid to acquire Navteq.- The Symbian Foundation will be formed in 1H09 from Nokia and founding members OEMs (Fujitsu, LG, motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson), network operators (AT&T, DoCoMo, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone), hardware platform and chipset vendors (Broadcom, Ericsson, Freescale,  ST, Texas Instruments), system integrators (Digia, Teleca, Wipro), content providers (EA Mo