The Mobile Future

The global software maker Adobe Systems has long held a vice-like grip over the fancy end of Web site presentation, thanks to the ubiquity of its Flash animation tools. But a new computing segment is opening up that is forcing Adobe to rapidly change tack.

Mobile phones are emerging as the big new computing platform for the next decade. But whereas today's fixed-line Internet is dominated by Microsoft's Internet Explorer and tools such as Flash and Java, the battle for supremacy on the handset is yet to be decided.

Clearly Sun Microsystems' Java dominates today, with the research company Ovum estimating that as of June 2006, there were 1.2 billion Java-enabled handsets in the market, with 10 out of 11 manufacturers using Java as their application delivery and deployment platform.

But problems in translating Java's write-once, run-anywhere model to the handset have opened opportunities for different platforms to emerge. Thanks to the plethora of handset screen-sizes and multimedia capabilities, developers who write for Java Mobile Edition (Java ME) find themselves having to port their software to hundreds of different devices, adding significant cost to their development cycle.

It is this chink in Java's armour that Adobe is hoping to exploit.

"The key thing that Adobe realises is that we are at this tipping point now where there is actually more phones in the next 12 months that will be connected to the Internet than PCs," says Mark Szulc, senior systems engineer at Adobe Australia. "So if people want to get content out there, their audience is probably greater on a mobile phone that it is on a Web browser."

Adobe has been working hard to get Flash Lite preloaded on to as many mobile handsets as possible, rather than requiring consumers to download it as they would on the regular Internet. The company has relationships with the six largest handset makers, who have shipped over 150 million Flash-enabled handsets worldwide. Some devices have their entire user interface developed in Flash, including the LG Chocolate phone.

The director for technical marketing at the mobile and devices business unit at Adobe in the US, Anup Murarka, says his company has relaunched its developer program globally to accelerate uptake.

"If you look at the traditional developer community, the creative professionals that have used Adobe products for years and years, there is a real interest," Murarka says. "They are trying to figure out what they should do in mobile. Flash is proving to be three to five times faster for the application and content development than most of the technologies they have used in the past. But I don't think Flash is a direct competitor for Java, because they solve different needs -- Java is meant for a programmer, and Flash is meant for a creative professional."

Flash and Java aren't the only two platforms out there, but some are experiencing mixed success. In mid 2004 Telstra decided to bring the iMode platform to Australia. iMode had been wildly popular in Japan, where it was the primary means of interaction in a culture with relatively low fixed-line Internet penetration. The concept failed to take off in Australia. A spokesperson from Telstra declined to comment on the fate of iMode, but given that no references to it appear on the company's Web site, it is safe to assume that it has no future in the Australian market.

The Symbian platform has fared much better in Australia, and is found extensively throughout the handset ranges of many makers. Developers have shown considerably less enthusiasm for it though as a development platform, as the widespread availability of Java on Symbian handsets means there is practically no work happening on the platform in Australia.

Another environment that is gaining some popularity is BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless). Brew is a 150 K thin client application, and provides a set of APIs for allowing developers to create software applications for wireless devices, supposedly letting them write to BREW devices without needing to know anything about the device's chipset. But no carriers have taken up the BREW platform in Australia.

Microsoft has been pushing its Windows Mobile operating system as a suitable platform for handsets, primarily in the more business-oriented smart-phone segment.

According to Microsoft Australia's enterprise mobile solutions specialist Rick Anderson, there are around 18,000 commercial Windows Mobile applications. Windows Mobile is carried on a variety of handsets from companies such as 02, iMate, Dopod and Hewlett-Packard, and ruggedised devices from Intermec and Symbol. Samsung, with its i320 phone, has also joined the Windows Mobile pantheon, and Anderson says Palm (which is another smartphone platform developer) is also preparing a Windows-based device.

Anderson says Microsoft is working hard now to raise the training level of its mobile developers in Australia, and has created the Mobile2Market, where applications can be vetted and certified.

"We are very strong on thinking that our developer community is something that is really important to us," Anderson says. "We are very encouraged to make this community work for us, because we know full well that if we don't have a stack of people to make these great applications to drive the usage of this stuff, it's not going to do us any good whatsoever."

Likewise, both Sun and Adobe are also stepping up their developer programs in Australia. Sun's software product manager for Australia and New Zealand, Laurie Wong, says that Java ME is becoming a stronger component of its Sun Developer Network. Every three months the company runs local Developer Days, featuring multiple sessions on ME. All of the toolkits for Java ME are available free of charge, and ME developers can also seek accreditation through a similar learning path to regular Java developers.

The issues around compatibility between device configuration still presents headaches. With look and feel still an important factor in consumer's buying considerations for phones, it may be some time, if ever, before standardisation of capabilities is reached. In the meantime, the frustration experienced by developers has led many to begin looking for their own way around the problem.

The bluepulse platform created by Australian Ben Keighran provides a standardised rendering environment for XHTML Web pages that is suitable for over 1000 handsets, via a Java and C++ application that consumers download to their handset. Keighran says there are half a dozen master configuration versions of bluepulse to suit different manufacturers, with the specific model and capabilities of the phone determined when it contacts the bluepulse server.

"What me and the team have developed is something that allows us to have a couple of key versions, and we can do custom-builds on the fly," Keighran says. "We've found a couple of things we can do to avoid what a lot of companies are still struggling with, but that's a bit of a trade secret. But porting is a massive problem, and it is very, very hard for many game publishers to get stuff out to a lot of handsets.

Keighran says there are now at least 1000 widgets available for bluepulse users.

The Sydney-based developer Bizi has taken a different approach. It does not require the consumer to download any form of thin client or rendering application. Rather, its software is incorporated directly into the mobile application or game that the consumer is trying to access. Once the application detects the handset, it automatically reconfigures itself to suit the phone's capabilities.