report mobappsplugtests public - etsi · gmrc/w+ -action 4 launching communication campaign by...

REPORT MOBILE APPLICATIONS PLUGTESTS GENESYS / Amai Magannon NET INNOVATIONS / Bruno Delb

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REPORT

MOBILE APPLICATIONS PLUGTESTS 19-22 June 2006

and

STATE OF THE ART WORKSHOP

ON MOBILE APPLICATIONS PORTING AND DEVELOPMENT

SOLUTIONS 21 June 2006

ETSI, Sophia Antipolis

Mobile Applications Plugtests 2006 for sharing experience and improving interoperability issues

in a commercially secure environment


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Summary

Marketing report ......................................................................................................... 3 Statement of Mission – Marketing support .............................................................. 4 Planning of Action ................................................................................................... 5 Marketing Pitch ....................................................................................................... 8 Marketing Targets ................................................................................................... 9 Marketing Targets ................................................................................................... 9 Mobile Applications Plugtests, 19-22 June.............................................................10 State of the art Workshop on Mobile Applications Porting and Development Solutions, 21 June .................................................................................................11 Recommendations .................................................................................................14

Technical report .........................................................................................................15 The content of the event ........................................................................................17

Status concerning the interoperability problems.................................................17 State of art ..........................................................................................................17 A structural problem ...........................................................................................17 The Java mobile platforms .................................................................................18 Testing Java handsets........................................................................................18 Overview of the technologies .............................................................................19

Return on experience of the plugtests....................................................................21 Overview of the current market ..........................................................................21 Taking into account constraints vs optional features ..........................................21 The mobile services platform..............................................................................21 Return of experience ..........................................................................................22 Next steps ..........................................................................................................22

Recommandations .................................................................................................24


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Marketing report


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Statement of Mission – Marketing support

The success of an interoperability event grows with the number of participants and the quality of the test methods and tools provided during the event. This increases the opportunity to discover interoperability issues with third party equipments through a neutral test environment.

GENESYS implements the following in order to get the concept be useful and attractive for the

participants:

- Market analysis - Target identification - Streamlining and focusing on the needs and expectations for an efficient promotion - Pro-active discussions by directly contacting potential participants.

Means used to attain this are as follows:

- Information dissemination through a collective letter and technical committees. - Identification and focus on specific targets to attract a minimum reasonable number of

participants. - Use of our existing clients and customers database. - Internet. - Writing and designing the content of the Mobile Applications Plugtests Web pages.


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Planning of Actions

The following actions were proposed and validated by the Plugtests Service during our preparatory meetings in March.

Date Action DeliverablesACTION 1 Preparatory meetings with Genesys, Net

Innovations and ETSI

ACTION 2 Meeting with partners

ACTION 3 Launching Web site

Content for Web site: - Event Information page - Technical page - Technical questionnaire - Company Profile of Net

Innovations, PMC and GMRC/W+

-ACTION 4 Launching communication campaign by

sending invitations to all contacts registered on our database + phoning

Email invitation ETSI and PMC Email Reminder Email invitation to access the Virtual Provisioning Server (VPS) Email confirmation access VPS

ACTION 5 Set-up “State of the art Workshop on Mobile Applications Porting and Development Solutions” + sending Workshop invitation to all contacts registered on our database + ETSI’s regional partners + PMC’s + Tele@vision’s + phoning

Programme Workshop Email invitation

ACTION 6 Mobile Applications Plugtests, Sophia-Antipolis

Four partnerships were established to provide the Mobile Applications Plugtests more visibility and means to widen the scope of the event:

• GMRC / W+ (China)

Over a 100 mobile applications was at the disposal of the participants from the Guangzhou Middleware Research Centre (GMRC), thanks to its Mobile Killer App Enabler – the WISE Platform. COMPANY PROFILE

The GMRC provides the advanced software infrastructure that is required by the Chinese society and bridges the gap between China and the world in Advanced Software Technologies. Founded by MOST and MOE, it focuses on application infrastructure software (middleware) research and development in key research areas such as: enterprise Application Infrastructure, mobile Middleware and RFID Middleware.

The GMRC is hosted by the W+ Technologies Ltd which is a privately funded company and whose mission is to simplify and enrich our daily life by providing highly personalized information services, anywhere, anytime. W+ provides its customers with easily customizable services and toolkits, allowing them to create and share personalized information services and content effortlessly. WEB SITE www.middleware.com.cn/ver_eng/


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• Unified Mobiles (France)

More than 50 handsetshttp://etsi.org/plugtests/Upcoming/MobApps/handsets.htm was to be provided by the PACA Mobile Center (France), but due to their last minute withdrawal, they were replaced by those of the Unified Mobiles Java Testing Services. COMPANY PROFILE

Net Innovations and Unified Mobiles have created a very large knowledge base on Java handsets (1200 handsets have been referenced, including about 400 well-known) and a very complete Java Testing Suite to qualify Java features of mobile phones, oriented end-user, and Java mobile applications. Unified Mobiles opens its Test Labs to the participants of the Mobile Applications Plugtests of ETSI. These services are proposed as complementary service of UMAK (Unified Mobile Applications frameworK), our unified development solution including a porting engine of new generation.

WEB SITE www.unifiedmobiles.com

• Net Innovations (France)

A Test Bed which is a combination of: - a J2ME Provisioning server JavaPhonie™ - specifically developed interoperability testing MIDlets

was set-up by Net Innovations to allow testing against of mobile applications. An Interoperability Guidelines was also made available.The test bed was open for remote pre-testing to registered participants several weeks before the event.

Bruno Delb, Net Innovations CEO and a mobile application expert, served as moderator during interoperability technical discussions.

COMPANY PROFILE

Bruno Delb has written the first French book on J2ME. After a long experience of Project Manager as a consultant, he has founded his own company in 2001, Net Innovations. Net Innovations is specialized in the Java mobile technology. Since four years ago, he has been involved in solving porting issues of Java mobile applications and has build his own approach. WEB SITE www.netinnovations.fr

• Tele@vision (France)

Tele@vision’s contribution was to have participants discover new ways of performing mobile marketing by demonstrating their products. COMPANY PROFILE

The company Tele@vision exploits the best of NTIC to provide new forms of communication, marketing and advertising on all selling places whether they are physical (e.g. shops, agencies and other) or virtual (e.g. merchandising web sites). Tele@vision proposes a turnkey solution which from the production to the broadcasting brings every where and at any time the video information on demand. Available from a fix terminal plugged to the Internet - from a 3G / Edge mobile phone or a WIFI PDA - Tele@vision proposes new media vectors for delivering simultaneously concise, thematic and value added video contents on all types of platforms. With its two innovating solutions: the Bizz


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Clip® and the Visiocode®, Tele@vision offers new performing means that are mandatory be efficient and boost the communication and advertising value chain of tomorrow. WEB SITE www.teleavision.net


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Marketing Pitch

The marketing pitch serves multiple purposes:

- as the invitation text to be sent by ETSI to its members, as well as to its SIM Handset and J2ME Plugtests list of participants, and by Genesys to its list of contacts as the first step to approaching them;

- as the welcome page of the Web pages dedicated to the event situated at http://www.etsi.org/plugtests/mobileapplications.htm;

- in a shorter version, as a reminder sent regularly to all potential participants about the coming event;

- as the presentation of the event during the phoning period to introduce and / or specify the importance of holding and participating in such an event.

“ETSI is pleased to invite you to the Mobile Applications Plugtests™ Event, 19 - 23 June 2006 at ETSI Headquarters, Sophia Antipolis, France. By organizing this event, we are offering network operators, device manufacturers and mobile applications developers the opportunity to address the following issues, among others, in a neutral and commercially secure environment:

Mobile Applications Developers: play with more than 50 handsets to test the porting of your applications and meet face-to-face operators to check network compliance. -> TEST & SEE YOUR APPLICATIONS ON REAL DEVICES AND NETWORKS, EVALUATE QUALITY ! Network Operators and MVNOs: find out about a 100 new Mobile Applications to broaden your mobile applications catalogue .-> COME & SEE INTEROPERABILITY AT PLAY ! Device Manufacturers : share your technological support and development tools to enable more Mobile Applications to run on your devices. -> VALIDATE & STRESS YOUR DEVICE ! For further details and to help us optimize the event preparation, please visit and register at: www.etsi.org/plugtests/MobileApplications.htm

Registration deadline is 29 May 2006. This invitation is open to anyone who may be interested so please feel free to forward it… To promote, boost or expand your image and products a wide range of sponsorship program opportunities are available at: www.etsi.org/plugtests/sponsorus.htm

Should you need further information, please feel free to contact us at: [email protected]

Sharing experience, improving interoperability”

We participated in the graphical conception of the flyer by proposing and validating key words and images necessary to create an impact on the targeted public. We also have written the content of the Event Information and Technical Information pages of the Web site dedicated to the promotion of the event and to be found at the following URL: http://etsi.org/plugtests/mobileapplications.htm


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Marketing Targets

Our targets included:

- mobile applications content and service developers - network operators proposing such contents and services to their customers: Operators List

was established following our own market analysis and target identification - mobile device manufacturers: Manufacturers List established following our own market

analysis and target identification

Our scope extended to European countries other than France, as well as the North American and Asian markets.

The database is composed of:

1. SIM Handset and J2ME Plugtests List of participants provided by the ETSI and which contains

104 contact persons. 2. GENESYS contacts’ database (developers, manufacturers and operators) which contains 304

contact persons. Contacts were initiated through intensive e-mailing and phoning. On the side of mobile applications content and service developers, we were informed that it would

be difficult for them to spare a technical resource at a time of intense development and production following their successful attendance at the 3GSM World Congress 2006 held in Barcelona in February, as well as at the Mobile Entertainment Market organized by the Mobile Entertainment Forum in London during the last week of May. However, they are in demand of such proposal wherein they are given the possibility to test and validate their mobile applications against handset manufacturers’ and network operators’ requirements.

On the side of mobile device manufacturers, the mobile industry market remains fragmented.

Manufacturers have a little room for maneuver to differentiate themselves and therefore might not wish to jeopardize their assets by commonly solving interoperability issues. Likewise, some manufacturers have their own Forums in which developers can interact directly with them.

On the side of network operators, our analysis and experience of the present situation shows us that in spite of the will to attain common goals, each network operator remains dependent of its specific environment.


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Mobile Applications Plugtests, 19-22 June

Originally designed for 3 days of testing, the Mobile Applications Plugtests resumed its work one day earlier due to the necessitated departure of 2 of our partners.

The companies represented were mainly mobile applications developers who shared common interoperability issues and were very much appreciative of the high level quality of the solutions proposed to them by our partners.

Participants were able to create very personal relationships among them, allowing open

discussions regarding sensitive issues and exchange of valuable information. Thus generating a request to set-up a virtual working network between the participants to pursue the dialogue started at the Plugtests.

On our part, we think that regular follow-up with these contact persons should be considered by the Plugtests Service. Participants have been convinced of the necessity of bringing together the various actors in the field of mobile applications, as well as discussing, in a neutral environment offered by ETSI, interoperability issues which are coming very much in the foreground.

Regarding technical issues taken-up during the Mobile Applications Plugtests, please see Mr.

Bruno Delb’s Report, as he conducted and animated the testing process.


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State of the art Workshop on Mobile Applications Porting and Development Solutions, 21 June

As recommended in our report following the J2ME Plugtests 2004, a workshop was proposed not only to the Mobile Applications Plugtests participants but also to ETSI’s regional contacts and consisted of a morning session dedicated to the presentation of various solutions and an afternoon one-on-one session between interested participants and each of the speakers. AGENDA 9h00-9h30 Registration 9h30-10h00 Bruno Delb, CEO, Unified Mobiles

Presenting a complete framework for unified mobile applications development 10h00-10h30 Vincent Berge, CEO, Mobile Distillery Accelerating Java Mobile development

Software solution for porting and optimizing J2ME application to multiple phones (over 320 phones as of today)

10h30-11h00 François Joseph Viallon, Manager, PACA Mobile Center (PMC) Introducing the 1st European Pooled Mobile Phone Centre 11h00-11h30 COFFEE BREAK 11h30-12h00 Hongbo Xu, CTO, W+ Technologies Limited and Deputy Managing Director,

GuangZhou Middleware Research Center (GMRC) Designing and creating mobile multimedia contents without any programming efforts 12h00-12h30 Laurent Gottely, R&D Engineer, France-Télécom / Orange

12h30-13h00 Anthony Krizmanic, CTO, Tele@vision Bringing every where and at any time the video information on demand 13h00-14h00 LUNCH BREAK 14h00-18h00 One-on-one session ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

• Unified Mobiles: a complete framework for unified mobile applications development Unified Mobiles introduces UMAK (Unified Mobile Application frameworK), a complete framework

for unified mobile applications development. Built on the concept of reusable mobile components, it’s now possible to produce J2ME mobile applications, DoJa mobile applications and Web applets in an unified way, with only one reference application.

This innovative concept is based on a knowledge base very detailed and on a Java Testing Suite to test and qualify Java handsets. UMAK introduces also a Productivity Tools Suite to accelerate the cycle of development, from the coding to the deployment. www.unifiedmobiles.com and www.netinnovations.fr

• Mobile Distillery: accelerating Java Mobile development

Mobile Distillery, a key player in porting and optimizing J2ME and Doja applications to over 300 phones, will be presenting its latest version of its award winning Porting solution, Celsius V3.5, including new J2ME/http feature. The program is in a workshop format, very developer oriented, with multiple examples.


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www.mobile-distillery.com

• PACA Mobile Center (PMC): 1st European Pooled Mobile Phone Centre

PACA Mobile Center is a not-for-profit consortium, founded by French high tech companies like Mobile Distillery, MobiVillage, Miyowa and Audio Mobile Agency, dedicated to help Mobile Application Developers to access shared resources and services mainly during the development phase on mobiles.

The key objectives are to alleviate the economic pressure felt by developers, simplifying the access to a maximum numbers of handsets, providing quality phone knowledge based information, and sharing the know-how of the members. www.pacamobilecenter.com

• GMRC / W+: designing and creating mobile multimedia contents without any programming efforts

The mJoy mobile infotainment platform enables ordinary users to design and create mobile

multimedia contents easily without any programming efforts, not to mention an ease to share and distribute multimedia contents to a vast mobile user community. mJoy is a revolutionary product for the mobile infotainment market!

To date there are about 50,000 mJoy members on JoyDNA (www.joydna.com), and more than

2000 mobile games, cartoons and ebooks created by mJoy members. And 10 universities in Canton province have formed mJoy clubs.

GuangZhou Middleware Research Center (GMRC) is a leading middleware research institute in China. Sponsored by Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Ministry of Education (MOE) and hosted by South University of Technology (SCUT, www.scut.edu.cn ), GMRC is a key research platform in South China for advanced middleware research & development. www.middleware.com.cn

W+ Technologies Ltd is a leading mobile infotainment platform and service provider in China , with its core technology developed in anticipation of Wireless Internet’s impact on China’s 400 million mobile subscribers and 100 million Internet users. W+ is the key contributor and technology transferor of GMRC; it provides commercialization and services of GMRC technologies and products. www.wplus.com.cn

• Orange

The Midlet Analyser Tools suite is a static analysis program enabling verification of security properties of midlet.

It is used to verify the conformity of the midlet downloadable on the Gallery portal with a security profile describing the allowed network connections.

The analyser is automatic and efficient: thousands of midlets can be processed without user action in less than an hour.

• Tele@vision: bringing every where and at any time the video information on demand

The company Tele@vision® exploits the best of NTIC to provide new forms of communication,

marketing and advertising on all selling places whether they are physical (e.g. shops, agencies and other) or virtual (e.g. merchandising web sites). Tele@vision proposes a turnkey solution which from the production to the broadcasting brings every where and at any time the video information on demand. Available from a fix terminal plugged to the Internet - from a 3G / Edge mobile phone or a WIFI PDA - Tele@vision proposes new media vectors for delivering simultaneously concise, thematic and value added video contents on all types of platforms. With its two innovating solutions: the Bizz


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Clip® and the Visiocode®, Tele@vision offers new performing means that are mandatory be efficient and boost the communication and advertising value chain of tomorrow. www.teleavision.net


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Recommendations

In view of the latest prospective studies and market analyses, we believe that mobile applications will remain a very profitable market for the coming years.

The successful development of the mobile entertainment sector since 2004, the deployment of

3G networks, the proliferation of handsets, the availability of various tools and solutions to accelerate the development and the production of mobile applications (porting solutions, MIDlets verification platform, mJoy platform, among others) have proven that “mobility” is a widely and commonly accepted concept.

However, interoperability issues remain among developers, manufacturers and operators

which do not lessen the fragmentation of the market. Events such as Plugtests are more than welcome to allow sharing of experience and improving interoperability issues in a commercially secure environment.

Our feedback from the participants of the Mobile Applications Plugtests 2006, as well as from

discussions engaged with various targeted companies during earlier stages of the marketing work, allows us to say that the following components are fundamental to the organization of any kind of event addressing the mobile industry:

1. Providing content on various networks, servers and terminals and analyse the interoperability issues.

2. Experiment operation of the newest multimedia terminals and their capabilities in intensive content provisioning environment, making thus possible to have “extended experimental content provisioning”.

3. Testing against applications, which is much needed by content and service developers to identify and solve existing interoperability issues.

4. Workshops given by experts on hot topics describing the state-of-the-art of on-going and/or new technical solutions in view of sharing experience and leveraging further discussions and partnerships between participants.

5. Exhibition by developers, manufacturers and network operators of their respective projects on the matter allowing a better knowledge in a neutral but commercially secured environment.


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Technical report


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The Mobile Applications Plugtests™ 2006 took place from the 19st to 22th June, 2006 at ETSI (France - Sophia Antipolis). For this edition, solutions to solve interoperability problems have been presented and evaluated. Especially, a workshop organized on the 21th June has presented a state of art of interoperability problems with points of view of end-users, of mobile operators and of developers have been addressed : alternatives to solve porting problems, approaches of generators of applications, security of Java mobile applications, … Since the first J2ME plugtests, the market evolved from a very innovative market to a mass market. It means during the first event, there ware a lot of small developers, manufacturers and mobile operators. Now, the market is quiet different. Interoperability problems are currently the biggest challenge of the community, for the developers as for the mobile operators. Working at the level of the standards (for Java) is not mandatory but not enough, we have to find solutions to produce mobile applications of high quality and for a profitable price. It’s the objective of the Mobile Applications Plugtests.


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The content of the event

Status concerning the interoperability problems

During the short story of J2ME mobile applications, we heard some people saying problems of interoperability would be easily solved by new initiatives. For example : “J2ME is Java and Java is portable. So what do you say about interopability problems ?”. Or “MIDP 2 will resolve the problems of interoperability / porting.”, “JTWI will resolve the problems of interoperability / porting.”. Today, everybody knows it’s not the case. We know we have to perfect the standards to evolve them. To conclude, the current situation is that J2ME is portable but J2ME applications aren’t. It means bytecode runs correctly on all the Java handsets but the behaviour of the application (so at application-level) must be adapted for almost each handset. State of art

Porting faces to big problems concerning devices characteristics, devices features and mobile operator environments. In first, the fragmentation of devices characteristics :

• Screen size • Max jar size • Max heap size • Max RMS size • Etc …

In second, the fragmentation of devices features :

• Bugs of implementation • Platforms : MIDP 1 / MIDP 2 / DoJa 1.5 / DoJa 2.5 / Applets / etc … • Third-party APIs : proprietary APIs (VSCL, NokiaUI, LG API, …) JSR 184, JSR 82, JSR

205, … • Etc …

The third, the fragmentation of mobile operator characteristics :

• Gateways • Opened ports • Restrictions (on APIs access, open / closed access to outside the network, …) • Etc …

Status is that there are more than 1200 Java handsets worldwide. A first approach would to say series exist, so we can develop an application for a specific serie of models of mobile. But the problem is that more you support APIs or more your application stresses the mobile, more these series are fragmented. So to schematize, what the developers want today, it’s to adapt their applications to each model of mobile. And what the mobile operators want, it’s to use the maximum of optional features of mobiles. For them, the porting process must not limit the applications to the most common features of the handsets, the application must be able to exploit the maximum of specific features of the handsets. A structural problem

A completely interoperable mobile application is not possible due to a structural problem with mobile devices. In first, devices have very different physical characteristics : screen size, memory available, … So, at least, images must be adapted for each model of mobile. Especially, image resizing is a very big problem, it’s very difficult to automate this operation.


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In second, mobile have different features, they are different. So, the mobile applications can’t be the same to benefit the optional features of each model of mobile. Finally, the trend for mobiles is to embed more and more software and this software is more and more complex. So the implementations will continue to have some problems. The Java mobile platforms

A midlet is an application written for MIDP. MIDP (Mobile Information Device Profile) is layered on top of CLDC. It adds APIs for application life cycle, user interface, networking and persistent storage. Two versions exist : MIDP 1 and MIDP 2. The CLDC (Connected, Limited Device Configuration) targets devices with an intermittent network connection and low memory. CLDC includes a virtual machine, the KVM (“Kilo” Virtual Machine). KVM is the Java Virtual Machine used by CLDC. In brief, MIDP 1 lacks of some important features :

• No fullscreen support • No image transparency support (even if in general it has been implemented by manufacturers) • No sound support • No user components at the low level UI • No access to the environment (camera, address book, …)

MIDP 2 has new features :

• Game API • Applications signing • Image transparency support • Improvement of handling key presses • Sound support • OTA (Over The Air) mandatory • Push registry • Enhancement graphics (alpha blending, …)

Specifications of MIDP 3 is in progress. There are also others Java mobile technologies :

• Java versions in Europe : MIDP 1, MIDP 2, DoJa 1.5, DoJa 2.5 (for Europe) • Some proprietary APIs due to the lacks of MIDP 1 (VSCL, Nokia, Motorola, Siemens, …) • Others versions in the world : DoJa 1.0, DoJa 2.0, DoJa 3.0, DoJa 4.0, Brew J2ME (bridge),

iDEN, … • Optional APIs : WMA 1 (for SMS), WMA 2 (for MMS), BTAPI (for Bluetooth), LBS (for

geolocalization), 3D, JavaCard / J2ME bridge (with JSR 177), Web services, … • And some parts of APIs are optional : MMAPI (with optional camera control, audio control,

video, …), WMA1 with CBS support, BluetoothAPI with the various protocols Testing Java handsets

During this event, Net Innovations provided about 50 mobiles phones : • Alcatel : Alcatel 556, Alcatel 735i, Alcatel 756 • BenQ : S660C, S670 / X2 • Blackberry : RIM 7730 • LG : C1100, G7100 • Mitsubishi : M342, M420i • Motorola : C450, C650, T720, V180, V525, A925, Nextel i95cl (CDMA), Nextel i710 (CDMA) • Nec : E313G • Nokia : 6111, 3510i, 5100, 6170, 6670, 7600, 7650, Ngage, 3410, E61 • O2 : X3 • Orange/Microsoft : SPV C500 • Palm : Tungsten C • Panasonic : X400 • Philips : X60, 350


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• Sagem : myX5 2V, MyV55, SG341i • Samsung : E700, E710, S300, X600, Z107, E820 • Sanyo : S750 • Sharp : GX20, GX17 • Siemens : C65, MC50, MC60, SL45i • SonyEricsson : J300i, F500i, T610, K700, P900

So, two CDMA handsets (applications can be installed by cable) and a Java WIFI handset have been provided. Various SIM cards have also been provided : Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecoms, Vodafone Germany, T-Mobile Germany and TIM (Italia). Overview of the technologies

1. The point of view of testing expert : Net Innovations The Interoperability Guidelines, proposed during this event, is a complete test plan dedicated to Java certification in order to test Java mobile applications. The Java Testing Suite is a suite of mobile applications testing Java features of handsets : MIDP 1, MIDP 2, proprietary APIs, MMAPI, SMS, MMS, signature, background running, … The objective is to qualify and to validate Java mobile applications and Java mobile devices.

2. The point of view of porting expert : Unified Mobiles UMAK® (Unified Mobile Application frameworK) is a complete framework for unified mobile applications development, supporting various platforms like J2ME, DoJa and Web applets in an unified way based on his own porting engine. The objective is to provide a solution to provide applications working correctly on each model of mobile.

3. The point of view of the mobile operator : Orange The Midlet Analyser Tools suite is a static analysis program enabling verification of security properties of midlet. It is used to verify the conformity of the midlet downloadable on the Gallery portal with a security profile describing the allowed network connections. The objective is to control the security concerns before the deployment of the Java mobile applications.

4. The point of view of the collaborative test centers : PACA Mobile Center PACA Mobile Center is a not-for-profit consortium dedicated to help Mobile Application Developers to access shared resources and services mainly during the development phase on mobiles. The objective is to share resources like mobile devices. PMC is a very good concept. It would be very useful for developers to extend it to others local mobile centers, based on the same model : Paris, european countries, etc … In the same time, at the last minute, PMC withdrew the 50 handsets of PMC : it showed an operational and organizational limitation of the PMC, which should be corrected. Net Innovations had to provide 50 of his own Java handsets.

5. The point of view of the end-user : GMRC / W+ Technologies The mJoy® mobile infotainment platform enables ordinary users to design and create mobile multimedia contents easily without any programming efforts, not to mention an ease to share and distribute multimedia contents to a vast mobile user community.


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The objective of this very innovative solution is to allow to non-developers people to produce their own mobile applications. It’s a very good illustration of the kind of problems we meet, porting problems especially.

6. The point of view of the user of mobile applications : Tele@vision® The Bizz Clip® and the Visiocode®, Tele@vision offers new performing means that are mandatory be efficient and boost the communication and advertising value chain of tomorrow. These solutions propose a solution which from the production to the broadcasting brings every where and at any time the video information on demand. The objective of this solution is to use new technologies like mobile applications, video, etc … and to bring them to the end-users. In particular, ergonomics is very important.


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Return on experience of the plugtests

Overview of the current market

Today, there are various solutions to facilitate the development of Java mobile applications. These solutions use different views, different approaches, have different objectives and different constraints. Globally, we can classify in them two big categories :

• end-users solutions (like W+ Technologies’s) • developers solution (like Midlet Analyser Tools’s France Telecoms R&D, Unified Mobiles’s for

J2ME developers and NPTV’s for non-J2ME developers) Concerning the first, the main problem is the different behaviour of the handsets. So, today, it’s not possible for an end-user to create an interoperable application because the devices have too different features. The developers, from their side, have to adapt their application to each model of mobile. The mobile operators are interested by a high quality content. For this, the developers need to be sure their application will run correctly on each model of mobile. But it’s not the case. Devices have very different behaviours. So, they have to adapt their application to each model of device. And they have to test it on real handsets. It’s why during this event, there was real handsets and solutions to adapt Java mobile applications to each model of mobile (called “porting process”). Taking into account constraints vs optional features

Handsets have a lot of constraints. The main are classified in big families. Devices have a limited memory (JAR file). The constraint is to reduce the size of the resources, especially images, and the number of classes in the jar file. Concerning heap memory, the developer has to minimize the use of memory. For this, it’s important to eliminate the instantiations of objects wherever possible and to mark as available all the large allocations of memory, … Mobiles have also a limited processor power. The developer has to profile slow-running code to find the bottlenecks. They have a limited storage. Developers have to consider others alternatives like storing in the jar file and reading from the network. The bandwidth is limited : we can find different type of connection (from GSM to UMTS) and connection can be intermittent. The screen is limited. It should include more mechanisms like zoom, scrollbars, … During the Mobile Applications plugtests, we noted a very big progression of the capabilities of the mobiles. Constraints are less and less important during the development. The new difficulty is more to take into account the optional features of the mobiles than to take into account the limitations, even if the constraints remain very strong and very important. The mobile services platform

For this event, Net Innovations has provided his provisioning platform, Javaphonie™. The developers have been able to upload their own mobile applications then to download them on the various handsets. A such platform is useful to facilitate the deployment of the Java mobile applications. JavaPhonie™ is a simplified download tool, as well as a mini-applications and mobile devices test tool. Virtual Mobile Applications Plugtests participants can upload their application(s) on the VPS. Participants have to provide certain information, especially the name of the application(s), its description, its category, the .jad/.jar files and its documentation. For downloading, the participants


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choose the category to browse, then the application(s) they wish to test. Several different types of applications are provided from Net Innovations. Applications are ordered first before downloading. This is possible by e-mail, by Over-The-Air (OTA) from the participant’s mobile phone or by http (the files will be installed on the participant’s mobile phone via his/her PC). We received feedbacks concerning evolution of a such platform, especially with devices characteristics. In fact, there is not a such solution today on the market. Unified Mobiles has developed his own knowledge base of 1200 Java devices while a lot of company explains there are about 300 or 400 Java devices on the market. This knowledge base was open to the other participants during the event and shows a very high interest for this kind of information. Return of experience

During this event, Net Innovations provided about 50 mobiles phones with various SIM cards : Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecoms, Vodafone Germany, T-Mobile Germany and TIM (Italia). Net Innovations has a long experience concerning testing Java mobile applications and Java mobile devices, with a complete test plan in the spirit of JavaVerified™ initiative and a complete Java Test Suite to test and qualify the Java features of the devices. This event showed the high interest to get an access to Java mobile phones. It’s a very big problem for each developer. Mobile test centers like PMC (Paca Mobile Center) are very good initiatives. But in the same time, such centers are local. The logistics costs are high and it’s not flexible to go to another country or to the other side of the country to test Java mobile applications on real handsets. It’s very difficult for a developer to correct his software if he is far from his office. A primary center with secondary centers would be a very good solution for the developers. The organization of this event showed also the difficulty of a such center :

• The mobile phones are sometimes simlocked on a specific mobile network. • The mobile phones must be tested on each mobile network : we need simcards from each

mobile network to test. • There is a big problem concerning testing of connected mobile applications (like multiplayer

games) if there is no coverage of the mobile operator we want to test. • We need to test mobile phones on European or worldwide networks.

Next steps

This event highlighted a lot of point to improve in the future. We noted some problems of configuration. Sometimes, configuration is specific to mobile applications (especially for video players). It can be a problem for end-users. GPRS roaming should be tested and validated. Especially, we need to test networked mobile applications on a lot of mobile networks, but the access to these networks is not always possible. The environment of J2ME should be defined. In first concerning WAP interactions : launching a midlet with parameters, launching WAP immediately not after exit, … If must also be defined concerning system events like incoming calls. Another big problem with specifications is KVM (virtual machine) should be defined with not optional behaviour. Especially, how could the device run in background an application if the device doesn’t support multi-thread ? Another problem with specifications : the devices shouldn’t add not specified behaviour, especially notifications.


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Finally, there are some big problems with some features in Java mobile applications, like signature. Java mobile applications can be signed for security purposes, but the embedded root certificates aren’t specificied, sometimes we can’t list them. The conclusion is it’s very difficult to sign Java mobile applications.


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Recommandations

To conclude, since 2002, ETSI organize mobile applications plugtests (J2ME Plugtests then Mobile Applications Plugtests). In 2006, interoperability of Java mobile applications is the most important challenge of the market. Mobile operators need to get mobile applications running correctly on all their handsets, developers need to have a solution to port their applications to each model of mobile at a limited cost. Working at the level of the standards is very important : they must be improved. But industry needs also to find solutions to adapt the applications to each model of device. If this problem is not solved, the profitability of the business of Java mobile applications will be very difficult to find for developers.

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