Qualcomm extends Brew to download PalmOS apps

NEW ORLEANS — Qualcomm’s Brew software download system will be extended to support wireless downloads to converged phone-organizer devices based on PalmSource’sPalmOS platform, Qualcomm said Tuesday.

Using client software from Qualcomm, mobile operators can extend the Brew system from downloads to conventional mobile phones to support downloads of PalmOS applications to a PalmOS-based PDA-phone, said Paul Jacobs, president of San Diego-based Qualcomm Wireless & Internet Group, at a press conference here at the CTIA Wireless trade show.

Alltel, a mobile operator that already uses the Brew system for downloads to mobile phones, will be the first to do this. It will offer wireless Brew downloads on the Kyocera Wireless 7135 PalmOS phone.

Until now, PalmOS device users have had to synchronize the handheld with a PC in order to download one of the approximately 17,000 available PalmOS applications, said David Nagel, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of PalmSource, a division of Palm Inc. based in Sunnyvale, California. Now they will be able to download applications directly to the 7135 wirelessly.

The new capability will be implemented by deploying client software on the device, with no changes to the central Brew download system, Jacobs said. Other carriers with Palm-based wireless devices could do the same through a relationship with Qualcomm by rolling out the software to its customers’ devices, he said.

Alltel, which operates CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) networks in several U.S. markets, plans to begin selling 7135s with the client in the middle of this year and at the same time make it available to users of existing 7135 phones as a download, said Philip Junker, executive vice president of marketing at Alltel, in Little Rock, Arkansas. The 7135 supports both traditional second-generation CDMA, with a data throughput of 14.4K bps (bits per second) and CDMA 2000-1x, which delivers 40K bps to 70K bps, he said. The carrier recently started up its first CDMA 2000-1x commercial deployment in Florida.

Alltel is the exclusive carrier for the 7135 in the U.S. but others will follow soon, said Skip Speaks, president and CEO of Kyocera Wireless, in San Diego. Kyocera Wireless is a division of Japan’s Kyocera.