Java gets a mobile lift - US/Pacific outlook - Java 2 Micro Edition

CommunicationsWeek International, Dec 17, 2001 by Elizabeth Biddlecombe

While you should not believe everything you read in the media, news announcements of late are beginning to create a picture of the mobile future that is wedded to mobile java or, to give it its proper term, Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME).

At Comdex in Las Vegas last month, mobile handset manufacturer Nokia announced the multi-vendor open mobile architecture initiative to standardise mobile phone platforms. Alongside WAP 2.0, XHTML, multimedia messaging services (MMS) and SyncML, was Java.

But that's future talk. The reality now is that the only country where the technology is in the hands of users in numbers is Japan, where both Docomo and J-Phone have rolled out services.

Hutchison Telecom has had its K-java service up and running in Hong Kong via its OrangeHK operation since August. The only other carrier with a live mobile java service is U.S. iDen operator Nextel, of Reston, Virginia.

But there are carrier-independent implementations, as at the Women's Cancer Center, in Palo Alto, California.

The center has been using a mobile java-based system for the past two months that allows geographically dispersed physicians to receive schedule and patient information while in the field, as well as input diagnoses and billing codes. Previously, paper schedules were distributed and reports filed via fax.

"It could be a month or two before [the doctors] coded all the paperwork and faxed it in.," says Scott King, president at Minneapolis, Minnesota-based Catapult Technologies Inc., the company that implemented the application.

Now, physicians in the Women's Cancer Center group use Palm V and Windows CE devices running over San Francisco-based Omnisky's cellular data packet data (CDPD) network to receive schedules, input information and interact with the practice management system supplied by Prime Clinical Systems Inc., of Pasadena.

Other companies have had a hard time selling mobile java-based applications. Tim Appnel, director of technology at New York-based e-business developer Agency.com, says the technology just isn't established enough to make it a viable pitch to customers.

Nextel only recently implemented IP mapping so that the phones have an external IP address for accessing the Internet. Initially, java applications could only be downloaded to the phone via a cable, not over-the-air. 'To look a client in the face and say 'Put this on 1,000 phones' has been a hard sell," says Appnel.

Bob Ewald, director of wireless data services at Nextel says: "We're adding new capabilities each quarter."

While Nextel won't release figures, Ewald says that there have already been tens of thousands of applications downloads since the service was launched in the spring. There are currently more than 30 applications available, ranging from calculators to games.

"We expect to have nearly 50 [applications] by the end of the year," says Ewald, adding that the company also expects to have a million handsets in use by April.

Sprint PCS says it will launch mobile java applications at the same time it launches its next generation CDMA 1X network in the middle of next year.

"It [is not just] a phone system but a distributed computer network," says John Yuzdepski, vice president and general manager of Sprintpcs.com, the unit that looks after Sprint's wireless data portal and application development program.

Yuzdepski says messaging and gaming are popular already with mobile data customers and web services-applications that talk to applications-will follow.

Nextel makes money from mobile java in two ways. It takes a small cut of the download revenues but a more significant source is the data rate plans the user must subscribe to to get java services.

Users are not charged for the application download, but for the information sent between phone and games server, or phone and corporate database.

"The initial buckets [rate plans] start at 175 Kilobytes," says Ewald. "It is a very small amount of data."

Ewald says the most commonly used plans allow for 175 kilobytes for $12.99 and 450 KB for $17.99 on a monthly basis. This compares with $5 to $15 for unlimited usage on non-java wireless web plans: a significant hike.

It might be tempting to look at this as bonus revenue, but mobile Java could become must-have weapons in the competitive arsenal for every mobile carrier.