Qualcomm Advances Brew Mobile Platform, Bundles Opera Browser

Qualcomm has announced that its Brew Mobile Platform (Brew MP) continues to gain momentum among a growing community of publishers, developers, operators and device manufacturers. The company also announced it is preintegrating Opera browsers with the Brew MP operating system.

Qualcomm made these announcements at the CTIA Wireless 2010 conference in Las Vegas on March 23. Qualcomm officials said the company has been working with software providers to preintegrate and optimize key software components into the Brew MP operating system, shortening device manufacturers' time to market and lowering their development costs.

"Qualcomm is working more closely than ever before with an exceptionally vibrant community of innovative publishers and developers as Brew MP continues to gain traction in the industry as a flexible and powerful mobile operating system," said Jason Kenagy, vice president of product marketing for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, in a statement. "We look forward to many more devices and applications reaching the market and bringing consumers the compelling, personalized mobile experience for which Brew is known."

Under Qualcomm's 3Pre program, the company is working with key software providers to optimize, preintegrate and distribute key software components with the Brew MP operating system, allowing developers to distribute their applications prior to the launch of new handsets to reduce development time and cost. The 3Pre program offers applications from multiple software companies for multiple application categories, including browsers, messaging, navigation and others. Developers now taking advantage of the 3Pre program include Aplix, ArcSoft, Bitstream, Comviva, iSkoot and Scanbuy.

"Qualcomm understands that in this new era of mobile apps, a diversity of high-quality applications drives adoption and sales," said Anna Magliocco-Chagnon, president and chief executive officer for Bitstream, in a statement. "Some of the largest mobile operators in the world favor handsets utilizing Brew.  By preintegrating our mobile technologies onto Brew MP through Qualcomm's 3Pre program, we are able to work with device manufacturers and mobile operators to speed the availability of leading-edge mobile technologies to consumers the world over."

"We are excited about the fast-growing Brew MP ecosystem and JBlend's seamless integration with the platform," said Arron Fang, executive vice president for Aplix, also in a statement. "The combination of JBlend and Brew MP is an important cornerstone for application innovation, which facilitates flexibility for developers and also bridges the platform to a wide range of established, industry-standard JSR [Java Specification Requests] API resources for future extensibility. With Brew MP's solid architecture, JBlend has realized powerful multitasking Java environment on the platform."

The Brew Mobile Platform mobile operating system platform delivers smartphone functionality across virtually all tiers of devices, Qualcomm officials said. The operating system enables advanced capabilities such as touch screen, rich multimedia, window management, open platform extensibility and expanded support for native application development.  For more information about Brew MP, visit www.brewmp.com.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm and Opera Software announced that the two companies are preintegrating the Opera Mobile 10 and Opera Mini 5 browsers with Qualcomm’s Brew MP operating system. The collaborative effort, which will provide handset manufacturers with a streamlined way to offer Opera browsers on Brew MP devices, will be a key element of Brew MP operating system’s growing market momentum, Qualcomm said.

"Opera has a strong track record of delivering a rich and compelling experience on handheld devices, and we are pleased to now be offering an easier way for handset manufacturers to deliver that experience on their Brew MP devices," said Roy Satterthwaite, senior vice president, Americas, at Opera Software, in a statement. "We look forward to supporting the launch of Brew MP devices that feature our browsers."

"Qualcomm is streamlining the commercialization of Brew MP devices—and a broad range of innovative applications for those devices—by working closely with companies like Opera Software to preintegrate key software solutions with our OS," Qualcomm's Kenagy said. "We are very excited about helping our device manufacturing customers more easily capitalize on the synergies that exist between the powerful capabilities of Opera’s browsers and the flexibility and robustness of our Brew MP operating system."