Qualcomm’s Brew Platform Gains Speed With Commitments From AT&T And Sprint
Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) is becoming a major software supplier in mobile for mid-range devices in the U.S., but rather than make money on the platform, it hopes to sell more phones with its chipsets inside.
Up until now, Verizon Wireless was the largest customer of Qualcomm
I have worked on Brew for years (now I am a very happy iPhone develper). Brew has screwed Carriers/Developers over for years. I am very skeptical that they will change their ways with their Brew Deck. I guess there is enough market pressure that they may change.
I will be interested to see how they handle the notification problem. Currently the developer would need to somehow route an SMS to the brew device in order to wake the device. Another major problem for developers will be how many different kinds of devices that will be available in the market. Handling all the screen sizes, memory sizes and all the other things is going to be much more difficult than developing just one app that can run on all iPhone and iPod touches.
My opinion is ATT (or any carrier) and Qualcomm combined should take far less than 30% since their platform will be much harder to develop for.
First of all AT&T, do we really need a new way to describe mobile phones? Quick messaging? I can send out a quick message from my high end smart phone or the cheapest give away phone. Let’s not over complicate things. It was nice of your consultants to slice things up but let’s leave that one internal.
Secondly the devil is in the detail for this new app segment. If OEMs and operators will not be charged for BREW, does that mean Qualcomm will be taking their share from the 30% AT&T keep, or nothing at all? Will NSTL still be plunging your running app into a Farady cage 10 times and failing you for an app issue before even contacting you to discuss why it might have occurred? And what will they charge for this, and will it still be a per device charge?
“If developers didn’t consider building their applications on Brew before, they most likely will now.”
I am not so sure. You still have these unanswered questions, massive device fragmentation and a complete lack of excitement amongst this user demographic. On top of this, even if moderately successful the apps will need to be marketed so my money is going to be on iTunes and Android. The carriers should never have been in the business and should not consider a new platform an opportunity to give it yet another go.
While fragmentation will continue to exist due to different screen sizes, memory sizes, etc. its hard to believe that developers will ignore such a large addressable market. Between AT&T & Verizon you’re looking at 60M+ subscribers. That’s a hungry audience that some developers are going to be happy to satisfy