J2ME is moving fast. The
J2ME is moving fast. The Mobile Edition of Java, aloows downloads of applications onto supported mobile phones. Once again, finding it's first markets in the entertainment industry, small mobile Games are the first J2ME features to take of. German mobile Portal developes Jamba, and Norwegian Mobile Portal (Telenor) DJuice, are amongst the first to deliver downloaded Java applications to customers.
J2ME is interesting for a few reasons:
because it seems all mobile phone manufacturers have for once settled on the same standard,
because it is Java based, and therefore has a large developer community
The big problem seems to be a plethora of partially incompatible SDK's (See Bill Day's page for a list of J2ME SDKs and IDE's), leaving developers with developing one version, and then tweaking for the spec's of each handset. (Does that ring a WAP bell?)
SMS Billing and surcharged messages?
TDC seems to have problems getting phone-bills out to customers. Their new Amdocs developed billing-system is giving them a small headache, leaving them delayed with a large number of bills.
Why is that interesting? It's this same billing system that is supposed to solve many of their problems relating to surcharge (premium rate) sms messaging, and allowing them to offer true content-based pricing. Now if that actually works any time this year it could be a very significant development in the Danish mobile internet market. Watch out for more news on that!
On the 802.11 front, read this article on Meshed Networks, and take note of Upstart company UltraDevices. Meshed Wireless Networks seem to be headed for a bright future, also in a developing world context, and UltraDevices seem definitely to have understood that pressing the entry-price is one of the keys to succes.
