Concepts and technology for distributing Java applications to your users
If we believe that mobile applications written in Java are the real future growth area of the mobile economy then there is an interesting market segment to watch. This market is about bringing the Java applications to the user and as simple as it sounds as difficult it is behind the scenes. 3 software players from Sweden, Israel & USA try to capture this market.
From a user perspective most Java applications you can download, install and run on your device will be premium apps you have to pay for. Sometimes you might have a trial period of x days which makes it feel like shareware. In other cases, and here you have to be lucky, you get the application for free - yes, real mobile freeware. And finally you will be able to ask the advertising industry for support which enables you to enjoy mobile freeware and gives you rewards in form of "entertaining advertising messages" on top of it.
Having understood this readers might agree with me that we will definitely face a future where you can get mobile apps from many places at different prices. This leads to a price competition among the providers of mobile applications. An easy example: If my operator offers me a tetris game for 3 Euro and some operator-independent application vending machine offers the same for 1,50 Euro then why the hack should I buy from my operator. Remember, in the mobile Internet the next point of sale for mobiapps is also just a click away.
This situation will get really funky for operators - pricing Java applications that become a commodity in the right way. Operators need surveillance controlling the pricing strategies of their competitors. And they need the powerful technology, too.
Imagine that you have a mobile device with limited memory. Then sooner or later you will need to delete an application because you are kindly reminded of it: "no space for new applications". If you delete a game and you want to play it again later you need to download it again, right? But here you don't want to pay again for it because you already paid for it. So the whole story gets complicated because operators need a Digital Rights Management (DRM) system allowing them to track who bought when what.
Imagine that you are changing your operator after 2 years full of buying mobile apps from their vending machine. Will you be able to access your personal digital repository when you are suddenly the customer of a competing operator? Will operators make customer churn easy or difficult at this point? This is where cross-operator application vending machines like Midletcentral come onto stage whith clear benefits. They are structuring their offer based on the various handsets - not many at the moment, but mobiliser already pointed out the variety of Java devices to come.
From an operator perspective they need to buy and operate the right technology to manage the demand of their subscribers for premium and free applications, including their wish to carry their digital assets to the next provider. Three companies are entering the field. ellipsus systems from Sweden, mobilitec from Israel and 4thpass from USA. They all have good investors behind them and mobiliser will look in a future story more intensively into their strength and weaknesses. If I was an operator I would talk rapidly with all of them, e.g. by flying to the Java One Conference in sunny California.
