Sprint talks turkey with mobile developers

The Mobile Application Platforms and OS conference held this week in San Francisco offered a unique opportunity to listen in on a conversation between the mobile platform designers and carriers and developers.

Unfortunately, not all of the speakers went beyond the usual canned presentation, but Jared Peterson, director, Sprint Application Developer Program, was one who did.

Peterson gave a frank talk on what the carriers expect from mobile application developers.

Peterson began his talk by reminding the audience that carriers first and foremost want to make money, but they also need to reduce churn,and improve user experience. Applications that can do that and at the same time support the carrier brand and strategy will be promoted.

From there, Peterson spoke frankly about standards and why carriers often find it necessary to offer proprietary solutions.

“Open standards have always been behind where we want to go,” said Peterson.

In elaborating, Peterson said Sprint, and other carriers as well, have ideas that are not addressed by the standards bodies very quickly. The example he used was the lack of support for a flip phone where the screen must be addressed as an external device.

“There was no standard in Java that had the ability to work with an external screen for a flip phone,” Peterson said, “so we had to look for a proprietary extension.”

While Peterson admitted that if carriers try to dictate too closely what ISVs do it can stifle innovation, at the same time, carriers need to maintain a certain level of control, he said.

“Openness ends at security and privacy.”

Peterson says the carriers role in delivering applications is to ensure that the application fits into the carrier’s overall business and portfolio strategy, ensure that the application is well tested, and ensure that usability is consistent with the overall product experience.

However, he warned the developers sitting in the audience that they should not assume that any carrier will offer a great deal of support for their applications on their Web properties or on the Home Deck of the device unless the developer has entered into a close and formal partnership relationship with them.

Peterson sees the next three years as the “golden age” of mobile development where the ability to execute is finally catching up with the intent.

In other words, ideas pitched in, say, 2001 may have been great, but the technology wasn’t really ready until now.

As witnessed by Apple’s entry into the cell phone market, Peterson expects the next three years to see more and more large players come in, especially major media companies.

He reminded the audience that this shift means that developers will be dealing with people who know their market but do not understand the mobile market.

Advertising on mobile devices will also grow, Peterson said.

And finally, in April 2008, Sprint will roll out its first deployments of WiMax technology at speeds of two to four megabits per second.

Sprint owns just about all of the licensed spectrum that WiMax runs on. He said it is the company’s attempt to get away from the economies of 3G technologies.

It will be a $3 billion investment in WiMax infrastructure, and it will give Sprint lower network and embedded costs.

“With WiMax, you have performance that will allow you to do a lot more with the browser space,” he told the developers.

While there will be WiMax-enabled cell phones, the early devices will more likely be specialized data devices, said Peterson. WiMax will also crop up in laptops with WiMax data cards. Intel will incorporate a WiMax chipset embedded on the motherboard and combine Wi-Fi and WiMax into a single chipset over time.