Interested in OpenGL ES support in upcoming Series 60 2nd Edition Feature Pack 2 based devices such as the Nokia 6630?
Check out the training from Khronos Developer University available in 2004 and the first half of 2005.
Following up on things I’ve written about number portability in the US: Switching seems to be picking up steam of late as Reuters/Yahoo News reports in “Pace for Wireless Number Switches Quickens“.
Stats worth noting from the article include:
- There are approximately 168.5 million US wireless subscribers as of now
- 5.4 million customers have switched since number portability rules went into effect in November 2003
- More than 2.8 million of those switched from May to July 2004
- 544,000 “cord cutters” moved their home or office landline phone number to their wireless phone since last November
Wireless highlights from my August blog entries:
- Nokia and Vodafone announced critical next generation J2ME tech, the Mobile Service Architecture, including two JSRs in the JCP to specify MSA for both CLDC and CDC based J2ME devices
- I delivered a presentation on “J2ME at Five” to the inaugural meeting of the Bay Area Mobility Forum (click to access abstract and slides)
- Nokia Developer’s Suite 2.2 for J2ME was released (adds support for Eclipse and open source Fedora Linux, among other things)
- Forum Nokia published information on Series 60 Platform 2nd Edition Feature Pack 1, in other words the latest release of Series 60 available in phones today such as my Nokia 7610
- Asian trends to watch: 3GNewsroom.com published some interesting worldwide CDMA adoption statistics, followed a short while later by a Business Times article on Nokia overtaking Motorola in China and an interesting Nikkei Electronics Asia article on Chinese and South Korean adoption of W-CDMA, CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, and TD-SCDMA
- I delivered a “Tips and Techniques for Advanced Wireless Java Programming” webcast as part of the Nokia Developer Learning Series (click here to access the abstract and a PDF copy of the slides)
- Russ Beattie hacked together mOlympics, a mobile RSS news aggregator for all things related to the Athens 2004 Olympics (note that mOlympics now resolves to mGuru; what gives, Russ?)
- Filipinos protested a proposed ‘texting’ tax meant to help relieve the national deficit (that’s a lot of twitching thumbs!)
- AT&T Wireless detailed their new UMTS service (click here to access the archived webcast)
Previous 2004 wireless recaps are available for: March | April-June | July
Top wireless news for developers from July included:
- Strategy Analytics released some interesting projections on how Asia will be the driving force behind smartphone sales in the future (the trend is obvious, but it’s worth a read for the details)
- Sendo began shipping the X handset, its first Series 60 based device
- Nokia and STMicroelectronics introduced a new camera module standard for mobile devices
- After quite a few people asked me about my new handset, I put together an “Everything about my Nokia 7610” post detailing how to migrate data from a previous phone, where to get a number of my favorite mobile apps for development, business, and personal use, and what specs and support docs one should check out to get a jumpstart
- Published my JavaOne 2004 recap including my take on wireless at the conference, slides for my sessions (and later a link to most of the Nokia presentations), and day 1 to 4 updates about the various sessions I was able to attend; check out the visual cross reference at the bottom of this post to jump straight to posts that interest you
Previous 2004 wireless recaps are available for: March | April-June
Now that I’m settled in my new position at Nokia, I’ve got some catching up to do on my monthly wireless recap posts.
My last installment was in my java.net blog way back in March. What I’ve decided to do to catch up is post this April, May, and June conglomeration, then resume monthly posts from July and August onwards. And since I’ve ramped up my wireless-related blogging on BillDay.com a great deal since March, I’m going to post the original entries here, then link from java.net.
Without further ado, here are some of the major wireless developments and stories from April-June in reverse chronological order:
- The JavaOne conference ran June 28th to July 1st; check out the June bits here, or jump straight to my July JavaOne recap (nested recaps, tres geek chique!)
- Sony announced it will halt Clie sales in the US (another clear sign non-networked PDAs are on the wane)
- Nokia overtook PalmOne in Q1 2004 as the number one seller of “mobile computers”: PDAs are dead, long live smartphones!
- I joined Nokia to head up Technical Services & Consultancy for Forum Nokia in the Americas (admittedly not big news for everyone, but at least it’s worth making the disclaimer so that everyone knows to take my comments in the proper context)
- IDC reported that the worldwide smartphone market grew 85% year-over-year
- Sony ceded the low end camera market to cellcams
- I WAP-enabled my site, again not a big deal to everyone, but it is interesting and instructive to see just how easy it is to enable new access streams when you’re using a good database-backed XML-based content management system (in my case the blog software WordPress) and also to note how WAP access to your site is becoming less and less relevant as more and more handset minibrowsers support XHTML
One thing I’m doing in my new digs at Nokia is trying to get out and speak to as many user groups as possible about Nokia’s technologies for mobile development. Example: My “J2ME at Five” presentation to the Bay Area Mobility Forum earlier this month.
As a part of this activity, I’ve been scouring the Web for lists of pertinent user groups, with a main focus on Java User Groups (JUGs).
I thought it might be useful for others if I published my working list of JUGs here:
- java.net JUG list
- Sun’s JUG search page, and an interesting subset, Sun’s “Top 25” JUGs
Please post a comment if you know of another JUG list or search page that might be of interest.
The article discusses the current use and plans for both W-CDMA and CDMA2000 1xEV-DO in China and Korea as well as China’s proprietary TD-SCDMA. Read the entire article to get to the Korean bits (second half after the discussion of China).
It’s been noted before, but it’s worth repeating: China is the world’s largest mobile phone market by number of handsets, crossing 300 million subscribers in May 2004. And with more than a billion citizens, there’s still a lot of potential upside left in China.
Following up on an earlier post about the Groovy JSR being approved for JCP development: IBM developerWorks has posted a reasonable overview of Groovy entitled “Feeling Groovy“. Includes a number of examples you can try out yourself.
Nokia and Vodafone have proposed an update to JTWI for both CLDC and CDC based devices. Today they announced that this update, the Mobile Service Architecture, has been accepted by the JCP for development. Details from the press release: “Nokia and Vodafone to Lead Roadmap for Mobile Java Standards“.
I hinted at some of the possibilities of MSA in my BAMF presentation last week, especially as it pertains to JSR 232: Mobile Operational Management. Now that the JCP has accepted both of the MSA JSRs for development, you can read more details about the proposal and the sort of work the expert groups intend to take up. Get a feel for the highlights from Forum Nokia’s MSA overview, then delve into more detail via the JSR 248: Mobile Service Architecture for CLDC and JSR 249: Mobile Service Architecture for CDC proposals.
What does this all mean? Nokia and its partners are working hard to simplify end-to-end mobile application development and deployment into real devices and networks. To put this another way: Watch these JSRs closely if you want to build wireless applications for deployment to hundreds of millions of Java enabled handsets in the next couple of years.
Mike Rowehl and Russ Beattie report on the first meeting and plans for future get togethers.
Thanks again to everyone who attended, asked questions, and hung around after my talk for discussion. We had a very good turnout for a first meeting, I believe 27 people was the official count, and 18 turned in a short feedback form I brought in exchange for a snazzy “Mobile Geeks Rule” tshirt. I’m looking forward to attending future meetings when I get the chance and hope to see many of you there if you’re in the Bay Area.
In addition to my “J2ME at Five” presentation, other resources you might want to check out include Russ’ photos (post 1, 2, and 3) and video and Martin Little’s pictures.
Interested in BAMF? Propose a speaker or attend a future BAMF meeting via the BAMF site.
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