Developers find BREW is just their cup of tea

The San Diego Union-Tribune
April 30, 2003
Article by Jennifer Davies

In January 2001, Qualcomm launched a technology called BREW to help guide the wireless Internet from hype to reality.

Some three years later, the wireless Internet and BREW are hardly household names. Still, progress has been made as more consumers are using their cell phones to send e-mail, take and transmit digital photos, and play games.

BREW has tasted its fair share of this success. The main goal of BREW is to make wireless data applications simple for the average cell-phone user to get and pay for.

Using a BREW phone, consumers can sort through a menu of options and easily download any number of applications, from ring tones to games to screen savers, with a few keystrokes.

As of March, some 28 million BREW applications had been downloaded worldwide.

"The story here is that BREW is real and it is making money," said Peggy Johnson, president of Qualcomm's Internet services division.

That theme was sounded repeatedly at this year's BREW Developer Conference, which ends today at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina on Harbor Island and has attracted a sell-out crowd of some 1,200 attendees.

Ray Rischpater, senior engineer at Rocket Mobile, a small wireless software firm in Silicon Valley, said BREW has allowed his company to become profitable and grow from three to 10 employees.

"It is definitely helping pay our rent," Rischpater said.

Still, the technology has plenty of challenges ahead. Some analysts say BREW faces serious competition from Sun Microsystems' Java wireless platform, which already has a larger subscriber base.

In addition, BREW is seen as having a limited reach because the technology works only on phones that use Qualcomm's wireless technology and wireless phone chips. Of the 700 million cell phones worldwide, about 20 percent use Qualcomm's patented technology, which is called code division multiple access, or CDMA.

But Paul Jacobs, president of Qualcomm's Wireless Internet Group, said both concerns are nonissues. Java, which is often characterized as a competitor, actually works with BREW, he explained.

"If someone wants to write a program in Java, then go ahead," Jacobs said. "Java works with BREW."

As for having a small market, Jacobs pointed out that seven carriers around the globe in such hot wireless markets as Japan, South Korea, China and the United States have rolled out BREW service.

Verizon, the largest wireless carrier in the United States, offers BREW applications through its Get It Now service.

According to the Zelos Group, a market research firm, some 13 million Java phones will be sold in the United States this year compared with 10 million BREW phones. In 2004, Zelos sees Java's lead expanding with some 27 million Java-enabled phones being sold compared with 15 million BREW-capable phones.

Scott Miller, who covers the wireless industry for Current Analysis, a market research firm, said concerns over the market size for BREW are premature.

"The downloadable application market is a relatively small business," Miller said. "It is far too early to say BREW is a niche or Java is a niche. Right now, they are both niche markets."

Thomas Ellsworth, executive vice president of marketing for Jamdat, a wireless game developer, said his company uses both Java and BREW to develop new games.

"The ultimate customer is the American consumer who is going to vote with their thumbs," Ellsworth said. "We say put our games in front of as many of those customers, regardless of the technology."

Jeffery Nelson, spokesman for Verizon Wireless, said BREW is attractive not only for its technology but because it provided an entire billing and developing system, which made it easy for Verizon to offer new services cheaply and quickly.

When Verizon customers download an application through the Get It Now service, they are told how much the application costs and those costs then appear on their monthly cell-phone bill. For every application that is downloaded, Verizon, the developer and Qualcomm split the proceeds.

"The great thing about the BREW service is that it is not just a technology but an overall system," Nelson said. "BREW has saved Verizon significant resources and got to market first."

Miller agreed.

"At the end of the day, BREW is much more a billing and distribution system than it is a technology platform," he said.

That is more than enough, said Michael King, a San Diego-based analyst for the Gartner Group. Carriers such as Sprint that decided to build application downloading systems from the ground up have had a harder time.

"We are still waiting for them to perform," he said.

King acknowledged that selling wireless Internet applications is difficult, as most people still only want to use their cell phones for voice calls. But he said BREW's ease of use can be a shot in the arm for the wireless Internet.

"The most important thing BREW does is provide somewhat of a success story for wireless data. That's good news for the entire industry," King said.