report

Transcription

report

REPORT MOBILE APPLICATIONS PLUGTESTS
GENESYS / Amai Magannon
NET INNOVATIONS / Bruno Delb
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 1
Action
Preparatory meetings with Genesys, Net
Innovations and ETSI
ACTION 2
Meeting with partners
ACTION 3
Launching Web site
ACTION 4
Launching communication campaign by
sending invitations to all contacts
registered on our database + phoning
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
Mobile Applications Plugtests, SophiaAntipolis
ACTION 6
Deliverables
Content for Web site:
- Event Information page
- Technical page
- Technical questionnaire
- Company Profile of Net
Innovations, PMC and
GMRC/W+
Email invitation ETSI and PMC
Email Reminder
Email invitation to access the Virtual
Provisioning Server (VPS)
Email confirmation access VPS
Programme Workshop
Email invitation
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
13h00-14h00
Anthony Krizmanic, CTO, Tele@vision
Bringing every where and at any time the video information on demand
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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report

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