The December Trip

I am just finishing now a one week business trip to the US, and as I wait for my flight back home, I thought I'd share with you some of my thoughts.

Anyway, in this trip we met with several virtual worlds operators in the purpose of cooperating with them on GamearraY's new (and still undisclosed...) product. It was a very interesting trip. Aside from our "sales pitch", we got to hear some of the thoughts of decision makers in this very young and vibrant industry.

It's refreshing to see an industry in its early days, where everyone still listens and not "stuck" in certain paradigms. Everyone knows that it is very early to know where exactly virtual worlds are going, and maybe even more important what would be the leading business models and the persistent ways to monetize on worlds.

As for mobile, we heard again that this is certainly the next thing for the industry. Unlike social networking sites that do have pretty good mobile services (usually WAP sites, but good ones), virtual worlds remain currently without any mobile access, and this is something all world owners want, even if that's not the first priority (Got to stabilize the world and bring PC users first...).

It appears that 2008 is going to be the year when virtual worlds will go mobile (this was also written in a recent industry forecast), so it's going to be interesting to see the various approaches out there.

There's a lot more, but I have to catch my flight. One last thing: I would like to wish Happy holidays to all of NextGenMoCo's readers! See you again in 2008!

Still here...

I haven't blogged for a while for no special reason, just a lot of interesting things are going on here in GamearraY... Once we get out of our current stealth mode for our new product I will of course update here.

Anyway, since Google's android was released (see my previous post), nothing exciting happened in the industry (as far as I know), and I guess since Christmas is approaching it's going to stay slow for the next month or so. However, 3GSM 2008 is around the corner, opening in February 11th, so this is about to change....

As for this blog, I am thinking about making it more than just a blog, so I would like to hear from you the readers what would you like to see in terms of content that is relevant for the mobile content and new media spaces. If you have any ideas or suggestion drop me an email or comment here in this post.

Google's Android

After a lot of speculations, some of the mysteries around the so called Google Phone or gPhone have been solved.... Google announced last Friday its Android software platform for mobile phones. The technology behind Android was invented by a company by that name which was acquired by Google 2 years ago.

Basically it's an OS for handsets, that is supposed to make things easier for application developers, be portable etc. Of course the proof remains in the unreleased pudding... But soon enough developers and analysts will be able to get their hands in the technology, as an early look SDK is said to be released on November 12.

By the way, the Android initiative has another name you might know and that's the Open Handset Alliance, and as the name suggests it's not just Google that is in it, but also several mobile operators (T-Mobile, NTT DoCoMo, Sprint), handset manufacturers (LG, Samsung, Motorola), platform vendors (Qualcomm, Esmertec) and other mobile companies (You can find the full list here).

So Google is trying to make an industry play here and so far so good. What remains to be seen if it will be truly open or Google oriented.... In any case the word on the blogosphere is that Google services would probably be easily accessible...

P.S. - Check out Luca Passani's new comment in my Porting 101 post regarding a new mailing list for J2ME developers. Luca is the driving force behind WURFL, and moderates that list, so if you want to tap in to his knowledge and influence WURFL for J2ME, you should join.

E for All expo - let the games begin...

The bottom line is that E for All expo (also known now as E4) has a great potential but it’s not there yet. Don’t get me wrong – it’s fun, loads of fun (like entering a huge arcade room…), but it still needs some work.

Here’s some history (Booth babes are down the page so don’t go away…): The legendary E3 expo which was the main gaming show for a long time and attracted tens of thousands of people from all around the world, was cancelled last year. The official reports indicated that publishers simply couldn't bear all the needed preparations which were unprofitable for them.

This led to the breakdown of E3 to two shows: E3 Media and Business Summit, a much smaller version of show, destined to the industry professionals, and E for All destined to consumers. E3 was held last July and to participate you had to have an invitation from one of the ESA members. There were only a few thousands attendees and reports are it wasn’t that good…

The main problem of E for All, which was held this October, is that exhibitors participation was thin, even too thin. Only one of the major console manufacturers exhibited (Nintendo; Microsoft and Sony weren’t there). On the publishers side, EA, the leading publisher did have a large exhibition area, and so did other leading publishers as THQ, Namco and more, but many important publishers such as Blizzard were missing.

Anyway, it still was a rather enjoyable show and again, in the tradition of the Nextys awards I started back in 3GSM 2007, Here are the winners of the show (BTW – They don’t actually win anything other than very limited fame and glory…):

Best Game: Guitar Hero III / Rock Band

THE game of the show was definitely Guitar Hero III, published by Activision. This game is so much fun, and was placed in many stations across the hall, that everybody took a try. I guess the brilliance of the game all boils down to its controller – the guitar. Timing games with notes/moves that reach to the bottom of the screen and then you have to press the right key, were here a long time ago. Guitar Hero took the same concept but made it way much cooler by adding an actual (fake) guitar that makes its player look and feel much cooler… The visuals on the screen and the audio also make things look more glamorous and that’s the trick…

And the best part is that it also makes sense business wise: piracy is much less attractive if the whole idea is not just the software but also the controller/hardware. You might as well just buy the whole set and not settle for nothing less.

Among the activities in the show, there was a stage in which Guitar Hero masters played like crazy and after they finished, went wild on the stage and got applauds from the crowd…

Hero’s twin brother Rock Band, which is published by EA and developed by Harmonix (Which was acquired by MTV about a year ago) is equally as cool, only this time you can play with a whole band, including guitarists, drummer and even a lead singer… My ears still hurt as I remember the peculiar sounds that went out from the amateur singers’ throats… But then again, it’s all for fun… Nobody expects you to be an American Idol (Or even an American…)

Best Booth Babes: Entropia

One of the long time traditions of E3 were the amazing half-dressed (or half-naked depending on your point of view) booth babes (There's actually a site dedicated to E3 booth babes called e3girls). In recent years it was so wild that E3 management had to constitute a “booth babe police” to ensure nobody is crossing the line… Anyway, it seems that this tradition is one of the other things that got lost in the way… I wouldn’t call most of the presenters booth babes, although they were cute. One company did keep the tradition and that’s Entropia with their lovely booth babes. Oh, and they also have a rather neat MMORPG called Entropia Universe that you may want to check out....

Best “out there” phenomenon: Fatal1ty

Do you know Lance Armstrong, the cycling legend? How about Michael Schumacher, the formula 1 all times champion? Well, meet another champion: Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel… (And no the 1 instead of an 'i' is not a typo, that's gamers lingo). Fatal1ty is a professional gamer, and like Armstrong/Schumacher he also has a lot of branded merchandise, not so much sports gear, but gaming gear, especially hardware… This guy also tours around the world to participate in gaming competitions… In the show he demonstrated his skills by playing Quake 4 head-to-head with some poor attendees which were eliminated about 20 times in 3 minutes… He’s good... (But C’mon, branded merchandise?... This is way too weird for gaming...)

Greatest blast from the past: Nintendo’s gun

After the success if the Wii controller, Nintendo is trying to innovate further that field, and while doing that they actually brought back a piece of history that reminds me of the good old days: The gun. It was very popular in consoles in the 80s, and is now making a swift comeback. Some people (like myself) wonder why it was gone in the first place… Anyway here in the picture you can see people wearing the best fashion from the time the first Nintendo console came out, using their long gone controller…

Most Anticipated Game: Metal Gear Solid 4

From the line at Konami's Metal Gear Solid 4 booth (which looked like a detention facility…) it was clear which game is most anticipated by the real gamers. MGS4 is a game that gamers dream about in their sleep… The trailers that came out recently caused some of them to temporarily lose their sanity… and in today’s gaming arena it is really difficult to do so…

Best show in town: Video Games Live

On the evening of the second day of the show, the “Video Games Live” concert performed in LA’s theatre hall (as a separate event). For those of you who don’t know it’s basically a concert (with an orchestra, choir etc.), but the masterpieces were not written by Mozart or Beethoven, but rather they are soundtracks from games… Martin Leung, also known as the "Video Game Pianist" from the show demonstrated his abilities inside E4, and it was simply amazing. This guy can move his fingers so fast you can barely track them…

Most popular trend: Immersive technologies

One of the things that could be noticed at the show is the number of immersive technologies which expressed mainly in gear for gamers (in other words hardware). I guess that after perfecting video and audio, there's a lot of promise in the next gamers accessory. Among the interesting gadgets were:

Novint's "Falcon" 3D Joystick

Novint’s Falcon 3D joystick is truly an immersive experience. It allows you to “feel” the textures of objects, block you from advancing if you’re against a wall, provide force feedback if something happens, and even simulate situations like holding a ball on a string (the way the weight of the ball pulls the hand etc.). Currently it is priced at $239.

TN Games' vibrating vest

This vest from TN Games has 8 vibrating pockets, 4 in the front and 4 in the back. It can simulate gunshots, and can be important to gamers as it immediately lets you know where you’ve been hit. It’s a nice experience and really gets you in the game, but I guess it can also be annoying after a while… Anyway I really enjoyed it, and you can get one for $169 (which is rather low compared to the next two products...)

Euro Touch Interactive's Z-dome

Ever wanted a personal iMax theater? Here’s your chance… The Z-dome which is a 3D sphere (which uses back projection) gives the illusion of 3D by surrounding its viewer. You just stand in the middle and enjoy… The picture doesn’t really capture the effect it has, but still I took one.. Oh, and the price is just $19K, so you might as well get two just for the fun of it...

HP Voodoo's D-Box chair

Now this is how a racing game should be played! Forget about keyboards or joysticks or even those small steering wheels that plug in to consoles… Voodoo, HP's high performance gaming brand now offers us this $15K chair with pneumatic pumps for tilts/vibration, real pedals and speakers in the back, and it seems to be the real thing! I took 3 laps normally which was very enjoyable and had the feeling as close to a car as I have ever seen in simulators, and then on the fourth I mostly tried to crash into things… and it was just awesome! (Forgive me for articulating myself as if I was a Ninja Turtle, but I guess all this gaming frenzy has this effect...

That about sums it up. I just hope next year's E4 will live up to become the old-new E3. Guess I'm gonna have to check it out personally again...

Mobile 2.0 Conference - We're getting there...

I have attended the Mobile 2.0 conference in San Francisco in Oct. 15. It was great to see so many people from the mobile space in one place. In fact, the event was like a Mobile Monday gathering on steroids...

The conference started with a great keynote by Tomi Ahonen, author of several books in the area and also a fellow blogger. One of the main points Tomi made was that mobile is as different from the Internet as TV is different from the radio - so solution providers shouldn't just copy apps from the Internet and "squeeze" them (couldn't agree more..)

Another issue in Tomi's keynote that relates to my previous post on Virtual Worlds, was the rise of these worlds. One world he mentioned in particular was Cyworld, the Korean virtual world. 43% of the Internet users in South Korea have an account there (!). This compares to 21% of the USA Internet users on MySpace and 17% of the UK Internet users. Cyworld also features 30,000 business that opened a virtual presence, as well as over 500,000 branded items. And as for mobile it already has a mobile service in Korea, and soon will have that in the US as well (Ahead of most of the virtual worlds).

The keynote was followed by some very interesting panels (great panelists). I won't go to details about each and everyone, but here are a few observations about things I saw and heard across the panels, and in the networking breaks:

Mobile social networking / content sharing is big. Nearly everyone I spoke with is doing something in that space. It's not very surprising due to the success of that segment on the web, but it seems that adapting that to mobile is not so easy, and the barriers are not just the form factor and all the usual technical issues, but also the high data rates which came up several times. When these are made more reasonable we should see the market evolving much more rapidly.

In any case, I guess Google's acquisition of Jaiku, a mobile twitter, will just make this space more crowded, so for those of you who want to be there - hop along now before it's too late...

Another hot area is mobile advertising, companies such as Smaato, Amobee, Greystripe and others are trying to start a revolution we are all waiting for... Advertising as a business model is probably a good fit for the mobile world. The prices for content are way too high, and the players in the mobile content field are struggling on a daily basis, since the download rates of content are flatlining in recent years.

Other issues that keep coming up are the keypad as a barrier, and what is its future - whether a touch screen like the iPhone, voice activation solutions (For example one such solution was integrated in tellme which was acquired by Microsoft recently) or other creative solutions.

Also, not surprisingly, the handset fragmentation issue came up... Devices are still very different from each other making life difficult for application developers, but at least one of the positive changes is that device information which was once difficult to obtain is available through multiple suppliers, some are even open sources (My favorites are WURFL and TastePhone, which is Java specific, but based on real values sent from phones).

The need for open standards also came up and is definitely another key driver to the industry, panelists kept reminding us that in fact we are in the early days of the industry, and despite all problems, we're advancing pretty well compared to what happened back in the days of the internet, PC and so on... So once standards kick in, we'll have much more viable and effective opportunities in our (currently) humble mobile space...

On the traditional launchpad several start-ups presented their "goods". Among those were Heysan (free mobile IM), Taptu (mobile search engine), Mippin (content optimization), Kyle.tv (video blogging) and more.

All in all, it was a great event with a great turnout, so thanks to the guys from Mobile Monday and the Open Group for making it happen. See you there next year...

Virtual Worlds 2007 - The birth of an Industry

Finally I am getting around to blog about all the great events I have attended in my recent business trip to the west coast. And first in line is Virtual Worlds 2007 conference which took place in Oct. 10-11 in San Jose.

In general, it can be definitely said that all the major players in the industry were there. CEOs and other senior executives of the major virtual worlds, content players, technology players and more. And most of them participated in the panels that as a result were very interesting.

Now, let's go ahead and walk through the interesting things I heard and saw:

TV and Virtual Worlds: CSI and The Office

The conference started with a keynote by Anthony Zuiker, the creator of CSI. What he announced is that CBS's CSI:NY is going to have an episode about Second Life (which was aired yesterday)... In addition I learned that NBC's The Office is going to have today an episode on Second Life as well... When two major networks have shows on that topic - it seems that the virtual worlds trend is getting to the eye of the public... BTW - CSI not only has an episode about SL, but also have a whole array of in-world activities that viewers can play with. This is a nice try to make a crossover between TV and a virtual world, so it would be interesting to see what was the users uptake.

Avatar Island by CyberExtruder and Cranial Tap

Isn't that the coolest thing? CyberExtruder, a 3D solutions company has a technology that allows transforming a 2D image into a 3D character. The system can recognize the face parts and based on that extrapolate on how the person looks like in 3D. Together with Cranial Tap they built Avatar Island (SLUrl), that makes use of this technology in Second Life by allowing users to upload a picture and get a face skin for their avatars.... Then you could roam inside the Metaverse wearing your real life face... In the picture you can see yours truly transforming from a real life person to a bold avatar... and there's a video too...

Motion Analysis Studios / Icarus Studios

This is an immersive technology by Motion Analysis Studios, Basically they have an optical-based motion capture system that allows them to translate the movements of a real person in real time to Second Life (And other apps as well of course). In this picture you can see the demonstrator on the right, and the Second Life avatar is doing what she does on the screen to the left. This was all a part of the Icarus Studios booth.


HiPiHi

HiPiHi, the "Chinese Second Life" as some call it was certainly one of the talks of the day. Everybody wants to know what the recently launched HiPiHi is planning. From the demos given at the conference it looks pretty much like Second Life, but in Mandarin Chinese... Also the look of the default avatar is somewhat different... Anyway it's one of very few worlds in which you can actually build freely and upload objects, and not limited to just simple customizations. Also, they have now an English translation of the interface (downloadable from the link above).

Planet 9 Studios

"Building Virtual Earth.. polygon by polygon" - this is Planet 9 Studios slogan, and indeed that's exactly what they do... They have a database of 3D cities data (of about 40 cities) which they update annually and can be licensed and used with several viewers (including Google Earth). This database can be used for Augmented Reality applications such as adding layers of data over the real buildings etc.

3Di - Movable Life

Movable Life from 3Di is a web-based thin client that allows users to connect to Second Life without launching the regular client, the idea being that you can chat and IM with other avatars, see 2D maps and more, but not see the fully rendered 3D world. This can be useful both when you can't launch the real client for some reason (Playing at work again?...) or if you don't want to launch it since you just want to chat with your friends and you are tired of the client crashing every 5 minutes... Of course I should also mentioned AjaxLife that works on the same principle and was online even before and also SLeek which is another thin Second Life client in the form of a windows application.

inDuality by Pelican Crossing & IBM

And another client solution is the still unreleased inDuality from Pelican Crossing, which was shown at the IBM booth. Unlike MovableLife, this is an in-browser full featured client for Second Life (and other virtual worlds). As far as I understand it downloads in the background a plug-in for each virtual world you want to connect to, which I guess weighs as the regular client (since it is fully functional), so while it's better in some ways than thin clients, the edge of doing things fast and from "dumber" devices is lost. Anyway, it's good to have variety...

Miuchiz by MGE Entertainment and Active Worlds

Miuchiz is basically a handheld virtual world... It is based on the Active Worlds technology and the MGE Entertainment brands and targets mostly kids. The device comes in several "flavours": Bratz (for girls), Monsterz (for boys) and Pawz (for both genders). The kids can play on the device and then synchronize their actions to the main grid using the USB connector that is built-in the device. Neat...

Active Worlds Facebook Application

Social Networks and Virtual Worlds are supposedly coming all together with this Active Worlds Facebook application. Once installed in your Facebook profile, you can enter the world from your profile page. However, the real value here is not very clear, since there is no real integration with Facebook. You might as well open the regular Active World app, and when you want switch application to your browser.


MoiPal by Ironstar Helsinki

MoiPal from Ironstar Helsinki is a mobile virtual world. It is still very small in terms of users, but it would be very interesting to see how this world evolves. This is one of very few mobile virtual worlds currently available, and it looks quite good and well adapted to the mobile form factor. The founder of the company is well aware that people will only use mobile in their idle time - and that's a good starting point. The question is whether users will engage in virtual worlds from their handset which they currently use in their idle time mostly for casual gaming.

Mobile and Virtual Worlds

On the mobile side, I asked virtual worlds operators' executives and it appears that everybody has mobile in mind. They all know that allowing mobile access to their worlds is one of the next steps, but as one of them told me not necessarily one of their top-5 priorities... There are others however that feel more strongly about it and are currently developing a mobile solution in-house, but are not willing to say much more about how or what it is going to be... In that aspect, virtual worlds are somewhat behind social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook that have a decent mobile interface. But I guess the challenge with a virtual world is bigger. The only world that I see as having a solid mobile solution in the short-term is Habbo Hotel. I spoke with Sulake's CEO, Timo Soininen, and he told me that as a result of Mini Friday's success, they are going to launch a mobile version that is both connected to the main grid and also supports a multitude of phones (Currently Mini Friday supports mostly Series 60 phones).

Interesting Statistics

According to Parks Associates 6% of all Internet users use some virtual world at least once a week, while 18% visited at least one at some point in a virtual world. These numbers are rising of course, but they still are quite low compared to the usage of social networking sites: For example in ages 18-24, 10% use virtual worlds, while 71% use social networking sites (!)... That's not very surprising since virtual worlds are new in town, but still this shows how much more it can grow (or not...).

Growth

As for the expected growth of users in virtual worlds, KZero forecasts that Second Life and the kids world Club Penguin will multiply their user base, There will grow from 1M users to 7M (!), Whyville from 3M to 10M, the relatively new player Kaneva from 0.6M to 3M and the upcoming Chinese HiPiHi from 0 to 10M.



Well, That's all for now, soon to come are the reviews of the Mobile 2.0 Conference and the E for All expo. Stay Tuned!

Virtual Worlds 2007, Mobile 2.0 Event and E for All reviews coming soon...

I haven't posted for a while since I have a very busy schedule. I am currently in San Francisco heading today to Los Angeles after I have been in the Virutal Worlds 2007 conference and the Mobile 2.0 conference both here in the Bay Area.

There's a lot happening in both spaces, and I am preparing a thorough post on each of those. In addition I am attending the E for All expo (formerly E3) tomorrow, and naturally I am going to write about that as well.

Probably will get around to writing next week when I am back in Israel. In the meantime, watch out for the upcoming CSI:NY and The Office episodes: Both will be about Second Life, so the are bound to be interesting/entertaining...

The CSI episode was announced by CSI creator Anthony Zuiker in the Virtual Worlds conference (See Reuters), and I heard about The Office episode in one of my meetings here, with the creators of the Second Life content featured there (See Virtual World News for more on that).

The episodes are going to be aired Oct. 24 (CSI) and Oct. 25 (The Office), so be prepared for the Second Life grid to get overloaded...


BTW - No picture this time since Blogger has some sort of a bug...

Virutal Worlds 2007

If you happen to be in the virtual worlds business, you shouldn't miss next week's Virtual Worlds conference which is taking place in San Jose.

As you probably know the virtual worlds arena is "exploding" these days and alongside the growth and acceptance of online worlds such as Second Life, Habbo Hotel and more, there is room for mobile solutions - whether in the form of simple SMS services for virtual worlds (And there are a lot of those already in Second Life) or in the form of a complete virtual mobile world, and everything in between.

So if you're interested about the fusion of Mobile and Virtual worlds, the conference is certainly going to be a good place to explore it, as it features speakers from key players in the industry, some already doing several things in the area.

For example, Sulake's Mini Friday is an interesting mobile virtual world. It started as an experiment, as Sulake defined it, but crossed the 100,000 registered users last month, after less than a year of activity (And a rather narrow support base for various handsets).

There are several senior speakers from Sulake as well as from other mobile companies such as MoiPal, and it's also interesting to hear what do the companies that still don't have any mobile solution plan in the near future.

You can find the full list of speakers and sessions in the conference site. See you there!

Mobile 2.0 - The conference

In about two weeks, Mobile Monday together with the Open Group is organizing in San Francisco a One-Day Event Focusing on the Mobile Web and Disruptive Mobile Innovation.

The event brings together experts and thought leaders from all aspects of the mobile ecosystem, including investors, mobile carriers, device manufacturers, and mobile application developers and web technologists.

Among the topics to be covered are: User Experience, Usability, and Design, Emerging Technologies, Enabling Infrastructure and Convergence, Disruptive Business Models and more.

This is the second year this event is being held, and the previous one was highly recommended by the people who participated.

As you probably know, Mobile Monday is a global community of mobile industry professionals with chapters across the world, that typically have meetings once a month (on Mondays...). Since I am going on business to the bay area in October I was searching for a Mobile Monday meeting of the silicon valley chapter, and was (positively) surprised to find out that this month's meeting is actually the Mobile 2.0 conference (which is organized together with other chapters such as the London chapter).

This is truly a once in a year opportunity to meet with all the right people from the industry in a more intimate atmosphere (as compared to the crowded 3GSM or CTIA, which is also around the corner).

So, if you happen to be in the bay area, you should certainly drop by (and even if you're not scheduled to be there - you just found an good reason...). So go to the event site and register (If you're super fast you may still get the early bird discount...)

See you there!

The office move craze

Over the past week we have been busy here at GamearraY with our office moved. We actually just moved between floors in the same building, but still it's quite an effort...

Suddenly you have to take care of things that were always there and were taken for granted (Didn't I use to have a desk?...), but as people say, as long as the wireless Internet connection moved with us all else is negligible (who needs water anyway...).

Anyway, In the end I think it went quite smooth especially thanks to our administrative assistant. But I (as well as several other employees) have been rather busy with all the involved logistics whether we wanted to or not...

There are still some things to do and stuff to find before we will be fully settled, but the new office is bigger than our last one and very comfortable so it's all worth it (And we need the space since we are expanding these days).

And of course aside from all the logistics we still have jobs to do... so my day is very full, but once everything streamlines, which should happen soon, I am going to resume writing on mobile content and also introduce you to some of the new writers we have now on board. Stay tuned!


P.S. - The picture above is my room in our previous office after all the stuff there were moved...

Shana Tova!

It is the new year's eve here in Israel. For those of you taking a look at your calendar, don't be alarmed - it's just September now, but according to the Jewish calendar, today is "Rosh Hashanah" which is the Jewish new year.

By the way, I took a look at Wikipedia, and saw that in fact you can celebrate the new year just about anytime you want, since there are so many different new year holdays celebrated by various religions and nations.

Anyway, I just wanted to say "Shana Tova" (the equivalent of happy new year) to all of NextGenMoCo's readers, may we all be successful both in our personal and professional lives.

P.S. - Last Sunday I have been at the "Jerusalem Rocks" festival here in Israel, and saw an amazing concert by the Black Eyed Peas and Arrested Development. I think it's the best show I've seen in years, they gave all they got. Thanks to Jeff Pulver and his friends for organizing this show. If you want to catch some pictures from the concert, check these.

What the future holds for mobile music

About two weeks ago, the Compact Disc celebrated its 25th birthday. It's amazing to see how things have changed since. What considered to be a revolutionary technology in the 80s, and was made mainstream in the 90s is already fading away...

Many factors caused the descent of the CD, but the major one was the MP3 format which came out in the mid 90s and became popular with the penetration of ADSL into households all over the world (And of course with the advancements of hardware such as larger storage devices that allow users to maintain huge libraries of music and faster CPUs that can actually play MP3s and allow the user to do other things as well...).

In addition, the ease of distribution (both for the vendors and the users) is simply a huge leap from the CD era: You hear a song that you want? You don't have to go to the nearest CD store (which are quite empty nowadays...), you just go to iTunes or another vendor and download the song. Also, the track is available on your computer or MP3 player, and you don't have to change CDs etc - we don't even think of these things today, which is a great sign of technology acceptance.

What does it all have to do with mobile? Well, I believe that mobile technologies will play (and already are playing) a big part in the next evolution of digital music. People (and especially teenagers and young adults) like their music to go with them. Music is one application which is in sync with the handset capabilities and form factor.

Unlike games & videos - bigger is not better: You don't have to have a big screen or other hardware that is not in sync with the essence of a mobile phone: You can output music in great quality via the headphones, and have a lot of storage with a memory card (Today 4GB cards are not rare, and it will only grow).

And since people don't like carrying a lot of stuff, but they won't go anywhere without their mobile phone - The MP3 player as a standalone device is short-lived, and will be assimilating in mobile phones (And this is already happening).

And the great thing about an MP3-player inside the handset as opposed to a standalone device, is music distribution: The handset can connect to the Internet and download songs. This is a huge advantage: If you are on the go, and want to hear a song you don't have/own, you can download it - and this is the real deal: Even after MP3s were widely used, you still needed to pre-download your selected music to the MP3-Player (Or a few year before that make a mix-CD with your CD burner) - Now you can not only hear music on the go, you can also get music on the go (And there's an Israeli startup called Hingi that allows users to download songs they just heard in the radio/TV even if they don't know the name of the artist/song).

Even Apple, maker of iPod, the most popular MP3-Player is foreseeing this trend and therefore invested a lot of resources in the iPhone. The ultimate MP3-player cannot stay disconnected - it has to be able to give the user the whole experience.

Of course there's the issue of piracy, which is bothering everyone in the music industry (After they had a few relaxed years when the CD came out, and before CD-burners were widely available...), but frankly, the mobile can handle DRM issues even better than the PC (And still I foresee a different business model for music consumption in the near future).

BTW - ADSL also pushed out the CD as a dominant way of distributing software: It is easier to distribute software over the Internet without any need for physical media, and sizes of hundreds of MB can be downloaded easily and faster than ever.

P.S. - As you probably noticed I haven't written here a lot lately, and this in part due to preperations for my 30th birthday which was yesterday... I just hope not to be outdated as the CD...

Summer time (And the gPhone)

August is here and the sun is high in the sky, and though I myself am not on vacation (a lot of interesting things are happening these days in GamearraY), a lot of lucky people are...

And this is why I decided to postpone the publishing of articles I received in the last couple of months. As you remember (or not) this blog will soon feature posts written by others and not just myself (And if you are a mobile specialist you're also more than welcome to join the team).

I have already collected some articles from various mobile industry professionals and we have interesting pieces about mobile advertising, media, messaging, video and more. Since I don't want these posts to go up unnoticed (due to summer time) I am planning to publish them on September.

In the meantime (if I am already writing this post...) I should mention the gPhone or Google Phone or whatever you want to call it... There have been some rumors about it and they are now getting stronger... you can read about it in Mashable! (Which is a great web 2.0 blog if you don't know it yet).

Jerusalem Rocks!

Today a lighter subject for a change... In about a month (On September 9th) an international music event will be held at Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem. For those of you who don't know yet - the Black Eyed Peas are coming to Israel and will be the main performer in the Jerusalem Rocks music festival.

They will be accompanied by Arrested Development (The rapper, not the great TV show...) and The Commitments (Yes, the band from the movie). This is certainly one of the biggest music events seen here recently, and it is definitely a great finale to this summer that featured a lot of international artists on their first appearances in Israel.

But unlike the other events, I think this is the only major event taking place in Jerusalem (and not in the Tel-Aviv area), and that's no coincidence... The organizers of the event want to make a statement to the world (and maybe even more importantly to Israelis...) that Jerusalem is a vibrant city and a great place to culture, business and most of all - peace (You can read the whole mission/vision here).

And speaking of the organizers, some of them are not from the music industry but rather from the hitech industry... These include among the rest Jeff Pulver, founder of pulver.com and a VoIP expert and Jacob Ner-David who runs a VC in Jerusalem right next to GamearraY's offices (and close to Teddy Stadium, so I guess we'll both be walking to the event by foot...). The producer of the event is Carmi Wurtman, who produced The One Shekel Festival (hebrew), and (what a small world) - his brother Elie (now with Benchmark) invested in GamearraY when he was with JVP...

So, if you didn't have a good reason to come to Jerusalem so far, here's your chance... See you there.

Porting 101 or How to destroy an industry...

One of the mobile market's major problems is the porting issue. Everyone in the industry is aware of the grim fact that every mobile application you make, you have to port to hundreds of mobile phones. The porting efforts can sometimes exceed the R&D time for the entire application... This issue holds the whole industry back, and must be resolved to get the mobile industry to the next phase.

I wanted to write about this subject for a long time, but it is so elaborate that every time I tried to, more and more issues popped into my mind... So I decided to "just write it", knowing that I may have missed a few things, but I would like to dig a bit deeper into the roots of the problems, as the effects of it are already known...

Unlike PCs, mobile phones are very different from one another. It begins with a different hardware (screen, memory, multimedia capabilities) and ends with a different OS/Virtual Machine.

One of the major differences between phone is what OS/VM they support. Some support Sun's Java (J2ME), others Qualcomm's Brew, others support Symbian and then there's the Windows CE smartphones and the Linux-based phones etc.

Going from one of the platforms listed above to the others, is more than porting - it is actually rewriting the application (And managing several codebases afterwards), and if all of the above would have had equal market shares - we might have been in a bigger problem than we already are... However, Luckily for us there is one platform that stands out, and that's J2ME.

Sun's J2ME (aka JavaME) is the dominant platform, especially in Europe, and even in the US it is becoming the de-facto standard pushing Qualcomm's Brew aside. J2ME is a Virtual Machine and as such is sometimes supported on top of other OSs, and that's what makes it so popular.

The problem is that even within J2ME, you still have to write slightly differently for various devices. Do you know Java's Motto "Write once, run everywhere"? Well in J2ME it's more like "Write once, port to 10 zillion devices, test till your fingers hurt and then hope for the best"...

Why does it have to be like that? Well, here are some of the major reasons:

1. Different profiles - Sun has defined two profiles for J2ME based mobile phones. The older one is called MIDP 1.0 and has limited features in terms of graphics manipulation, UI widgets, communications etc. The newer one is called MIDP 2.0 and is much more advanced and contains a more natural support in gaming needs. Today all devices going out to the market support MIDP 2.0, but there are still many MIDP 1.0 devices out there (For example Nokia Series 40 phones such as 6100,3100 are MIDP 1.0). In any case due to the limitations of MIDP 1.0 more and more content makers are not supporting it anymore.

2. DIfferent APIs - Some standard J2ME APIs are not necessarily available in every device. For example in the MIDP 1.0 days, the multimedia API (MMAPI) was not a "must" to define a device as MIDP 1.0 compliant. In the same way, today MIDP 2.0 contains a set of APIs the device must support, but many of the newer APIs, such as Bluetooth, PIM (Contact list access) and more are not a "must". Now, bear in mind that you can't just write a code that checks if that API is available and only if it is use it. If the API is referenced from your code and it is not available - your application will simply not run at all! So again you have to provide several codebases.

3. Proprietary APIs - In addition to Sun's formal specs and APIs, mobile devices vendors add to their phones special proprietary APIs. Usually these APIs allow the developer to utilize new technologies, or just supply a more native interface to the device hardware. The problem is that sometimes in order to create an application/game you have to use these APIs since if you don't everything would run very slow. A good example for that is NokiaUI which was an API that allows an accelerated graphics performance and enables some MIDP 2.0-like graphics manipulations in MIDP 1.0 devices.

4. Buggy Implementations - It is not uncommon to find standard J2ME versions that simply do not implement certain methods, or implement them in a wrong way. Sometimes the vendors are aware of this and mention it in their API documentations, and sometimes the developers themselves find it. So it is possible that two devices that implement the same profile, same standard APIs and same proprietary APIs, would still not work the same. For example, in Nokia 6680 if you'll try to rotate a sprite it will cost you dearly in the heap space (memory) of the device, and most likely crash it altogether...

5. Different hardware - Even if two devices share the same profile, APIs and implementation, their hardware attributes may affect how the code and even the graphical assets should look like. For example if one device has a resolution of 128x128 and the other has 240x320, you may have to produce different graphical objects for each of those. Also you may find yourself changing the UI concept altogether in the 128x128 device as it is too small for a UI that is best seen on 240x320.

The good news is that Sun is working closely with vendors to make a compliant set of APIs that should be more definitive (read my post on the MSA standard). The bad news is that we have heard before of other standards that didn't catch on in the market (Such as the JTWI). The problem is that even if one vendor does not adhere to the standard - all hell breaks loose.... (Not to mention the legacy devices that will affect us for 3 years regardless).

So let's wish Sun some luck, the mobile industry needs it...

P.S. - The photo above was taken in GamearraY's offices... These are just some of the handsets we have... So it's cool to get the newest gadgets all the time, but every such "gadget" comes with the intent of giving our developers a hard time in the porting process...

Facebook vs. LinkedIn

One of the hottest trends today is the migration of business people from LinkedIn to Facebook. For years LinkedIn was THE site for professional networking with no serious competition. But it seems that this situation changed and more and more users open profiles in the new and improved Facebook.

Up until recently Facebook was recognized as a personal networking site, and you would connect with your actual friends, and not with your professional contacts. Furthermore, it was restricted for people with an .edu email (Meaning only graduates of American educational institutes could use it).

A few months back, Facebook changed its policy and opened up for people from all around the world. It also announced an open API through which developers can easily create Facebook applications. This caused many people to open a Facebook account, and as more and more created it - the professional networks formed naturally.

For example, I opened my Facebook account just to experience their interface and API first hand, but before I knew it, I received requests from several colleagues... And now my network there contains some people that are not on my LinkedIn network...

I saw several posts in other blogs of people announcing they will cease to update their LinkedIn profile, and move to Facebook only. For example, Jeff Pulver the VoIP prince (who frequents Israel), wrote that in his blog. Paul Walsh wrote a similar post on his blog (and also a funny story about a friend being dumped by his girlfriend on Facebook...)

And since this is a mobile blog, we can't neglect the mobile aspect in which Facebook seems to be a bit ahead over other social networks: Facebook has a great mobile interface that allows viewing profiles via WAP, uploading photos, sending and receiving SMS notifications and much more.

One annoying thing in Facebook is that they allow those vibrating/flashing/blinking advertising saying that I am the 999,999 visitor (again?...) - it really bothers the eye, and I think that they should have a more strict policy on ads.

So for now, I am still not abandoning LinkedIn, since it served me well so far, but this might change if in a few weeks my Facebook network will outgrow my LinkedIn one. So if you want me to leave LinkedIn, look me up on Facebook...

WiFi / VoIP Wars: Part II

My latest post about the WiFi calls revolution was published in Israel's leading business magazine, TheMarker (Hebrew), and was also syndicated later to Haaretz, one of the leading daily papers here.

This obviously generated a lot of comments from readers on the various sites, and also some from my personal colleagues. So I am going to address a few of those here, but in any case it can clearly be seen that this subject interests a lot of people from across the value chain (including the end consumers...) . Here are the 3 major comments/questions:

1. VoIP subscription - Some noted that calls are not entirely free, since if you want to reach an actual landline/mobile you have to pay to the VoIP provider (Same as with SkypeOut). While that's true for now, think about what happens when most people have a WiFi-enabled phone: We will all be available at least some of the time with our VoIP presence, so everyone can call their friends inside the VoIP network without needing the operators' network (or the PSTN). In that "world" the balance between pure VoIP calls, mixed VoIP/mobile and pure mobile depends on the areas WiFi covers.

2. Quality of service - Some people who use Fring/Truphone said that the current quality of service can be low and they experienced all of the problems new voice services have: poor voice quality, hangups etc. So most still prefer to use regular mobile calls, even if they are more expensive. It's good to get this feedback, however they also agreed that in the long term probably these problems will go away, in the same way we saw Skype improving.

3. WiMAX - Some people asked why I didn't address WiMAX. First off, it should be clear that WiMAX is also a major threat (or opportunity...) to the operators, and in fact it's an extension to the same threat WiFi poses. Anyway, I preferred to focus on WiFi since devices are already in consumers' hands with the relevant software deployed and the infrastructure is here and now. Though several WiMAX networks are already deployed, the full power of WiMAX is still ahead of us (But closer than we think).

That's all for now, I am sure we will hear a lot about this subject. After publishing the post, I also saw that there's quite a "war" in the UK over this issue. Things are about to get interesting...

P.S. - Thanks goes to Guy Grimland who was bugging me for a while to submit an article to TheMarker... Guy is TheMarker's hitech reporter who also covers the Israeli gaming industry and gives it the attention it needs.

Viva la WiFi calls revolution!

Now that WiFi enabled phones are starting to get into the market, it can be easily foreseen that WiFi calls will become a reality for mainstream users in the next 3-30 years. Why this wide range? Well, 3 years if it was dependant purely on technology advancement, 30 years if it's up to the operators...

Yes, though they try to be cool about it, operators are very much afraid of WiFi calls, and it's very easy to understand why: When you have a WiFi enabled phone, whenever you are around a WiFi hotspot you have internet access which means that you can technically make voice calls over the internet the same way you make them with Skype on your PC.

If your phone is Windows mobile based, you can actually run Skype Mobile, simple as that. If it's not, third parties such as Fring and Truphone offer their own solutions. Without getting into details about the solutions and their differences, they enable VoIP calls over WiFi and also over 3G. (BTW - VoIP over 3G is cost effective only if you have a flat/cheap data plan, if you're not roaming and of course provided that your operator doesn't block it...). In addition phones are starting to come with built-in VoIP software.

Now WiFi is not everywhere, and also not always free, but even if you are in the airport, suddenly the outrageous $10/hour rate can make sense when it comes as an alternative to mobile calls while roaming.

Over the past years, operators have been fighting to provide their subscribers a walled garden Internet instead of an open environment in order to route all mobile content through their channels and cut their usual 50% cut. This has been going on despite of legislation and despite of protests of strong content providers such as Google.

How much of their revenues do operators make from data services you ask? Well, it's 7%-20% (Including SMS, browsing and mobile content). Voice accounts for more than 80%, and even 90% of operators revenues. Think how far they would be willing to go in order to protect that.

And this exactly why Vodafone and Orange asked Nokia to disable VoIP on the N95 in such a way that not even possible to use Truphone, and you can see Truphone's video demo comparing an unlocked phone vs. a locked one. (BTW - I perceive the N95 as a breakthrough, since most of the other WiFi enabled phones are far away from mainstream, either the Blackberry-like E61, the Windows bulky smartphones etc.)

Another example is that the all powerful iPhone was released with no WiFi calls support. Apple has done a lot to equip this gadget with all the software needed to enjoy the full experience of a phone/media/Internet, so why not include the one killer app that could have utilized 2 of the iPhone strengths?

But unlike the battle for mobile content which is still waging (With the operators having the upper hand), this is one battle they can't win, and in fact this battle will also make them lose the battle over mobile content. And the reason for that is simple: Up until now, the operators were our ISP as well. Every data packet came through their gateways, and as such they could always block whatever they wanted: By IP address, by file type (ringtones, games), by protocol (SIP) etc.

WiFi phones provide the bypass everyone has been waiting for: You can access the Internet directly whenever you are around a WiFi spot, and the operator can't do anything about it. What it can do, is sell its subscribers blocked phones, but soon everyone will understand that it's better to buy unlocked phones from retail stores.

Knowing that, some operators are embracing the "if you can't beat them, join them" approach. One of those is T-Mobile which is even promoting now a WiFi phone, but still capitalizes on this "generous" offer by taking $10/month from subscribers. Another operator that promises to open up is Hutchison/3.

In any case, operators are going to have to be creative and innovative to turn this situation from a potential disaster to a stage in their evolution. I am sure that in this case openness will be rewarded with customer loyalty, while tricks like locking phones, which is in any case a very temporary "solution", can only have the effect of antagonizing customers.

We should also remember that in any case, that while WiFi is spreading to a lot of places even to the extent of city-wide hotspots, it is still far from the worldwide coverage that operators networks supply (for now...), and this is another reason for operators to act wisely and not block WiFi, so their users stay loyal and use their network when out of WiFi range.

P.S. - For more on the N95 blocking you can read this. Also as a side note, even PSP will support VoIP soon.

Go Yahoo! Go

Have you seen Yahoo! Go 2.0? If not, go get it. Go is Yahoo's interpretation of how the mobile web experience should look like, and from all I've seen up until now - they got it right.

Yahoo! Go is a client application that allows you to basically do everything. Starting with search of course, browsing the web, accessing your Yahoo! mail account, accessing your Flickr account, finding directions and maps, checking the weather, news from around the world (via RSS) and more.

Being an all-in-one solution often means compromise in the various components withing the solution, but Yahoo! succeeded in giving a best of breed solution to each and every one of the enclosed components (With the understandable exception that you can only access their own proprietary services such as Yahoo! Mail and Flickr).

Generally, the interface is very user friendly and also "easy on the eyes" (You can see it yourselves in their slightly annoying demo video). Switching between the different applications is done via a carousel at the bottom of the screen. The applications themselves feature the same navigation and text entering interfaces, so once you learned the basics in one app, you are good to go in the others. Yahoo! have even placed an Intro tour that guides you through the interface in the first time.

About the various apps themselves, let's start with the search engine which is custom tailored for the mobile, and knows to bring the most relevant items, whether these are sites, pictures, reviews etc. For example if you search for a celebrity you will immediately get her pictures on the top... If you search for a movie, you'll get links for buying tickets and so on. Giving the relevant items on a mobile device, is even harder than on the web, since you want to give the user the top 80%-90% of the relevant results in the first page, which is difficult enough even on the web, but more difficult when you have the screen of a handset...

When you find what you want - you can browse the site with Yahoo! Go. It doesn't send you to the handset's mobile browser (which often doesn't cut it), instead Go features its own browser that also formats even regular web pages to your mobile, similar to what other mobile browsers such as Opera Mobile do (And this can be a big threat for Opera).

And of course you get ads on the top of the page if Yahoo! wants to, and these are ads from their network, regardless of what site you are browsing... In fact, as mobile advertising is getting more and more mainstream, the strategic value of having a "real estate" on the mobile phone is getting to be extremely important for search engines.

Back to the product: The Maps service is simply amazing, you can ask for directions, get them verbally and see them on the Map (And if you have a GPS, you can see where you are on the map). The weather service also works great, and you can easily add any location that you are interested in. Same goes for RSS news - add your own sources, track specific people or companies etc. You also have sports, finance and entertainment sections that are already configured with content sources.

Flickr access is very easy, and browsing through your pictures or others pictures is very intuitive and surprisingly fast. You need to enter your Yahoo! ID once, and then it automatically recognizes you both on Flickr and in Yahoo! Mail (Which also works great, but Google/Gmail provided such a service a long time ago).

In addition it seems that Yahoo! have dedicated a lot of thought to reducing data traffic, which is considered rightfully as a barrier for acceptance of mobile applications by users. You can check at any time how much data you transferred, and at the end of the session, you see the amount of data transferred. My "test drive" (on Nokia N73) included checking mail, entering my Flickr account and browsing through thumbnails of my pictures, asking for directions in NY and seeing them on the map (plus zooming in, moving the map a bit etc.), searching and browsing a few sites and more - and all of that consumed only about 0.5MB (At least that what Go reported...)

Now, what's the catch? Well the most significant issue now is that their device support matrix is still rather small - a lot of the phones appear on the site as supported but marked with a "coming soon" label. In any case, the support is improving. A few months ago, right after 3GSM 2007, where I originally saw Go, I tried to download it to my SonyEricsson K800i but it wasn't supported. Today it is.

Another small issue is the size of the application: 613KB for the Nokia N73 version... Nowadays it's not much of a problem, since devices have dozens of MB available for apps, but still it can take a lot of time to install over the air, especially if you don't have 3G. In addition, it makes me wonder how the implementation would look on older phones that they claim to be "coming soon".

And of course there's the issue of the content itself. On the web I usually tend to use Google's services, whether it's Gmail, Picasa or Blogger (used to write this blog). The question is whether having a great mobile solution such as Yahoo! Go will change my (and others) usage patterns when it comes to the web.

And while we are talking about Google, let's see what they have to offer: Google mobile services include their Gmail client and a Google Maps client. all the rest of the services are WAP based. Now you may ask what's wrong about WAP? Well, just read on a bit more (you've come so far...)

The Google Maps client interface is not an eye candy, but it has some nice features Yahoo! doesn't have. As for Gmail, I should say a few good words here: Gmail client was truly innovative for its time, both in terms of interface and usability. I am using it for over a year now if I remember correctly, and as a person who doesn't like carrying around my laptop (or using a heavy PDA) it changed my email availability altogether.

Google had a WAP version for Gmail even earlier, and I used that too, but as WAP services often are it was soooo sloooow so I avoided using it too much. So today when people are asking me what's wrong about WAP, I am telling them that the point in time when I started using mail on my mobile as a real alternative was when Gmail client came out (And usually they remember that it was the same for them...)

As I mentioned, aside from the mail and maps, Google offers the other services as well, but in WAP mode, and the experience is very far away than the experience you get with Yahoo! Go. Yahoo! is definitely on the lead here.

So, Yahoo! - you get a big thumbs up from me (I know you were waiting anxiously for this approval...) and Google - start running and fast - the mobile space is one place you don't want to lose to Yahoo!...

P.S. - I know everyone is blogging about the iPhone these days, so I'll make my contribution as well: Yahoo! Go supports the iPhone, and this shows how strong iPhone is from the get go. (And not another word unless Apple wants to send me one so I can review it properly...)

What Sun has in store for us?

I've attended Java Technology Day here in Israel and while this is a technological conference, it has deep implications on the mobile content we're about to see in the following years.

As you probably know Sun's J2ME (Java for mobile devices) became the de-facto standard for mobile applications in Europe, and is also rather popular all around the world, pushing other platforms such as Qualcomm's Brew aside (even in the US).

One of the major problems with J2ME is the lack of compatibility among devices. One of the reasons for this situation is that Sun's standard for mobile devices (MIDP) didn't require them to implement APIs for common features (such as multimedia, SMSs, Bluetooth etc.). This made developers to release several builds for each device according to its specific API support.

To solve this problem Sun has defined (in a process led by Nokia and Vodafone) a standard called MSA (Mobile Services Architecture). This standard has much more strict requirements from devices and as such can push the market into standardization. MSA comes in two flavours: full and MSA subset (for weak devices). Even in the MSA subset standard the following are a must: Multimedia, Messaging (SMS), Bluetooth, 3D graphics, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and PIM (Personal Information Management, i.e. access to the contact list and other files on the phone, such as pictures, MP3s etc.).

When J2ME started it was quite limited (somewhat due to the traditional "sandbox" approach), but as you can see the added APIs can leverage mobile Java applications into a whole new level.

Of all the APIs mentioned above, SVG is probably one of the more strategic ones for Sun, and useful for developers. Unlike bitmap graphics, vector graphics allows lossless scaling of graphic objects and is more suitable to some applications including mapping and can also help handle the difference in devices' screen sizes in games and animations.

The emphasis on SVG and its definition as a must even in the MSA subset is probably due to the gap closing by Sun's nemesis Adobe. Adobe has won the battle over the desktop with its Flash technology, mainly due to the difficulties users are having with installing the JRE which is the Java plug-in (And not a word about Microsoft's role in that...).

Now, Adobe is headed towards the mobile with its Flash Lite technology. In the mobile world Sun currently has a big advantage and that's its big install base, but Sun knows better than to sit still and is targeting one of Flash's flag features: Vector graphics.

The PIM API is also extremely important: Not only it allows interacting with the contact list (which is useful for community/friends driven applications) but it also allows access to local files on the handset. This means that Java apps are able to play MP3s and show pictures from outside their sandbox.

Another API worth mentioning which is not included in the MSA subset but on the full MSA is CHAPI (Content Handling API). This API allows Java applications (as well as native ones) to run other Java application to handle specific types of content, in the same way that on your PC browser when you click a resource of a specific type (PDF, MP3 etc.) it launches the relevant application.

So, to summarize, the new APIs, and their availability on a multitude of devices, opens a door to a whole set of new applications and new market opportunities. Now go get 'em!


P.S. - Expanding the standard set of supported APIs is great, but it is not a complete solution to the problem. Device manufacturers/mobile JVM vendors have been known to cut corners on Java implementations, and even the base API is sometime different from phone to phone (preventing the application developer from releasing a single build that fits all). So it is certainly not the end of porting - but it's a good step in that direction...