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BREW News - Volume 6, Number 2

> BREW 2006 Recap
> BREW 2006 - Developer Awards
> uiOne SDK Available!
> The State of Mobile Gaming - Q&A w/ Mike Yuen
> Application Development Tips

Additional Content
> Featured BREW Application - M-Wallet by Obopay
> Publisher Spotlight: 9Squared
> Special Offer for BREW News Readers

BREW 2006 Recap

The global BREW community recently gathered in San Diego for Qualcomm's BREW 2006 Conference. BREW 2006 was the largest BREW conference to date, attracting more than 2,500 attendees and featuring more than 100 speakers, representing leading technology, wireless and entertainment companies from around the world. Speakers focused on the global BREW community's advancements and opportunities in the areas of customizable user interfaces (UIs), mobile gaming, location-based services, multimedia, mobile messaging, business applications and a host of other segments. The show also took on a decidedly international flavor, with 15% of the audience coming from countries outside the United States, from more than 34 countries around the world. This was topped off with a compelling keynote presentation by Luigi Licciardi, Head of Handset and Technical Solutions for Telecom Italia (TIM), talking about BREW's potential in TIM's fixed mobile convergence strategy.

BREW 2006 was also a forum for the announcement of significant news and milestones, including:

• BREW publishers and developers, many of which participated in the conference, have earned more than $700 million from the sale of BREW applications and services since the first operator launch of BREW-based services in November 2001. The $700 million represents a substantial increase in the announced publisher and developer earnings from a year ago, when Qualcomm announced that publishers and developers had earned more than $350 million since the first service launch.
• Qualcomm unveiled the BREW Signature Solution for Gaming, a comprehensive gaming solution for wireless service providers that delivers the optimal gaming experience on mobile handsets. The solution packages together all the key components for mobile gaming including uiOne™, which enables richer on-device discovery, publisher and franchise-specific micro stores and support for pervasive game-based themes for the handset.
• Qualcomm will extend Microsoft's "Live Anywhere" vision onto the BREW platform, allowing for an integrated, high-quality, mobile gaming experience. This collaboration supports Microsoft's recent commitment to provide a unified gaming universe spanning multiple devices and platforms, currently including MSN® Games, Xbox Live® - including Xbox Live Arcade, MSN Messenger, Windows® Operating System and soon to mobile devices.
• Qualcomm announced the availability of its uiOne Software Development Kit (SDK) version 1.2 for developers, content providers and graphic designers interested in creating custom UIs for mobile devices. The uiOne SDK version 1.2 is currently available for authenticated BREW developers to download at https://brewx.qualcomm.com/brew/sdk/download.jsp.

This year's conference boasted more than 100 press and analyst attendees, including key wireless trade representatives, both radio and television broadcast reporters and influential game industry press, who all covered the tremendous growth experienced by both the BREW solution and the conference this year.

For a complete recap of BREW 2006 - including keynote and presentation videos, press coverage, BREW Times issues and event photos - please visit www.brew2006pressroom.com.

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BREW 2006 - Developer Awards

At the BREW 2006 Conference the winners of the BREW 2006 Developer Awards were announced. This is a global awards program that recognizes and promotes the best BREW applications created by wireless publishers and developers. The BREW 2006 Developer Awards - sponsored for the second year in a row by Motorola - recognizes wireless publishers and developers that are creating best-in-class BREW applications and services that propel wireless data to the next level. The winners were revealed during an awards ceremony held at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego on June 1.

Here are the BREW 2006 Developer Awards winners:

• Best Up and Coming Application: EZ Naviwalk by KDDI and NAVITIME JAPAN CO. Ltd. (Japan)
• Best Business Application: Chifeng Mobile e-Government System by Guangzhou Jinpeng Group Ltd. (China)
• Best Location-Based Service Application: LOC-AID People by LOC-AID Technologies, Inc. (U.S.)
• Best Communications Application: Uta-tomo (Music Friends) by Sony Corporation and Media Socket Inc. (Japan)
• Best Information Application: Barcode Reader & Maker by 3Gvision Inc. and MEDIASEEK Inc. (Japan)
• Best Entertainment Application: Amp'd Live by Amp'd Mobile (U.S.)
• Best Game Application: Need for Speed? Underground 2 by Electronic Arts (U.S.)
• Best Ringtone Application: RealTone Jukebox by 9 Squared Inc. (U.S.)
• People's Choice Award: Zuma by Glu Mobile (U.S.)

The BREW 2006 Developer Awards program consisted of nine categories that span a diverse range of applications from communications and information to games and entertainment. Entries were evaluated based on several criteria such as ease of use, originality, commercial viability and overall "wow factor." In addition, conference attendees were given the opportunity to vote for their favorite application in the highly-anticipated People's Choice award.

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uiOne SDK Available!

The uiOne Software Development Kit (SDK), version 1.2, is now available. This is for developers, content providers and graphic designers interested in creating custom user interfaces for mobile devices. The uiOne solution provides the wireless value chain with the means to advance the wireless experience via rich, integrated and dynamic user interfaces that can be updated over the air. The uiOne SDK provides the tools needed to create, simulate and run custom UIs on BREW devices, as well as the ability to test applications on PCs during the development process. This is the first time that the uiOne SDK will be made commercially available, marking an important advancement in the development of mobile device UIs, ultimately providing an enriched wireless experience for end users.

Included within the uiOne SDK are source samples that show the wide variety of options that can be achieved when developing for the uiOne solution. Developers can use the source samples as starting points to develop their own UIs. The uiOne SDK version 1.2 will be available initially for authenticated BREW developers to download from the BREW Web site. Authenticated BREW Developers can download the uiOne SDK in order to get familiar with the uiOne development tools and programming concepts for creating rich UI content. However, current uiOne operators are not requesting uiOne content from the BREW Developer community at large and limiting their requests to selected developers instead. QIS is working on expanding the uiOne marketplace to all authenticated developers with upcoming uiOne based services. BREW developer relations will inform the developer community once these services are available to all authenticated developers. Also, the number of wireless operators supporting uiOne keeps growing. U.S. Cellular is the latest wireless operator to reach an agreement for customized UI support based on Qualcomm's uiOne solution. Deploying uiOne signals the next stage in the evolution of U.S. Cellular's easyedge wireless data service, powered by the BREW solution. This announcement expands the number of uiOne operators to five, giving UI developers another avenue to bring their products to market.

For all of the BREW 2006 conference and registration information, go to www.brew2006.com.

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The State of Mobile Gaming - Q&A w/ Mike Yuen

Mike Yuen, gaming group director at Qualcomm, talked to Next-Gen.Biz about the challenges facing mobile gaming. He said current gloom about mobile gaming is misplaced and predicts that the platform could outstrip traditional gaming consoles.

Yuen says the biggest challenges for game publishers and developers include fragmentation of platform, porting costs, content discovery and merchandising, as well as accurate sell-through data and general consumer awareness. He adds, "I believe the industry has openly acknowledged these challenges and a concerted effort is underway to address and overcome these issues."

He is optimistic about the future of mobile games based on emerging technologies and his belief that future mobile phones will increasingly be designed with the gamer in mind.

To read the full interview, please click here.

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Application Development Tips

We'd like to draw your attention to some important new content in the Online Knowledge Base and BREW Forums:

Recently posted on the OKB is a new article, Memory Alignment Issues on ARM Processors. This article gives you an insight into the workings of the ARM core, and will help you avoid some common pitfalls and get the best possible performance out of your application. This is a must-read for any BREW programmer.

On the BREW Forums, we've recently posted a bulletin that will be relevant to any developer preparing for NSTL submission. This bulletin goes into detail about the NSTL Disable/Restore test procedure, and how to ensure your application passes this important test.

We look forward to hearing your feedback on this important new content.

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Additional Content

Featured BREW Application - M-Wallet by Obopay

Mobile commerce at work! Click here.

Publisher Spotlight: 9Squared

A BREW 2006 Developer Award winner, see here.

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