It’s definitely BREWing!If one were to go by the postive sentiments and optimism expressed at the recently held Brew 2006 Developers Conference – India at the ITC Grand Maratha Sheraton, Mumbai, the future definitely looks bright for BREW.
The day began with Kanwalinder Singh – President, QUALCOMM India & SAARC delivering a keynote address. According to Mr.Singh, nearly $700 million has been generated in revenue for the developers and content providers since the inception of BREW. He stressed on the importance of customization and personalization in the application. In fact, it is this aspect of the applications that most speakers at the conference attached a lot of importance to. Mr. Singh also shed some light on what on some future trends, mobile TV and FM enabled mobile phones with more interactivity for example. He expressed happiness at the fact that six of the twenty one finalists at the Wireless Reach™ BREW® Application Funding Program are from India. The complete list here.
Industry guru Andrew Seybold presented the global perspective, the key developments, challenges and futures. He spoke of the need to make browsing as the last resort for finding information and on developing active content giving an interesting example on what a mobile phone with active content could do for someone like him who’s arrived in Mumbai and is new to it. Usability, usability and usbility is what he said developers should keep in mind while developing applications. Content may be the king, but application is the queen, he said.
Pankaj Sethi from Tata Teleservices and Mahesh Prasad from Reliance Communications presented the carriers’ views. They spoke of the progress made since the previous conferences and the challenges that lay ahead especially in developing applications for VLE(Very Low End) devices and in local languages. They also added that the surface has been barely scratched and the potential is enormous.
The short enactment by Indiagames on giving the developer community their due was fun and was thoroughly enjoyed by the audience. Gandhigiri in the technology industry?! Well, it definitely worked in the enactment. In real life?!
Vishal Gupta, Sr Director, Sales and Business Development, QUALCOMM Internet Services, India presented the developer awards. Webdunia, Indiagames, Remoba and Phoneytunes were among the winners for various categories.
The post lunch session saw Mike Yuen, Senior Director, Gaming Group, QUALCOMM Internet Services talk about the global gaming industry and of the scenario where a mobile phone will evolve as a GEC – Good Enough Console. Thus the user will ideally not have to use any other device. Talking of piracy, he mentioned that nearly 80% of the games/gaming software currently in use in India is pirated. To overcome this, roll-out of 3G and 4G can provide a secure, high-speed wireless digital distribution pipe.
Dr. Nimish Shrivastava – Founder, Mast Mobile Media Inc. spoke of the need for the carriers to adopt a more holistic apporach and accordingly change their business models to ensure better and competitive platform for developers to showcase their products.
Post tea, Dr. Nikhil Jain – Chief Technical Advisor, QUALCOMM India familiarized the developer community with UiOne, an interface with allows for better customization and personalisation. Answering to questions from the audience, Dr. Jain admitted that it is indeed a challenge to develop applications for the Indian market where most of the population is illiterate and does not have the PC experience.Devices with UiOne are yet to be made available in India.
Mr. Gaurav Jain presented the QUALCOMM’s support structure for training and in-country developer support. QUALCOMM has appointed Mr. Rakesh Godhwani as Manager Developer Relations to faciliate better interaction with the developer community.
The evening saw entertaining performances by Parmeeta Katkar and A Band of Boyz.
Key points that emerged out of the conference –
* the future holds a lot of promise, and rightly so.
* India is a unique market presenting a lot of opportunities yet at the same time, throwing up a lot of challenges.
* Now that we’re in a scenario where there are more mobile phones than PCs, isn’t there a need to develop a non PC-like
user experience.
* And finally, can mobiles phones become all-in-one devices?
Things are poised at an interesting stage and we’ll be following the developments keenly!
PS. I was at the conference representing BookBox. We are one of the six finalists from India for the Wireless Reach™ BREW® Application Funding Program
