The second day at Sprint’s Open Developer Conference is done. It was another exhausting but fulfilling day. Today’s events had little to do with Palm so there won’t be too much to report from that angle. I did get to meet with many great Palm people at the booth they set up in the exhibit hall. And, I’m happy to report the food at the evening event was several cuts above the food previously available. Today was focused more on Sprint and the technologies it has invested in and fostered.
There were many concurrent sessions at the event today and I, being but one person, had to choose carefully. It was difficult and sometimes I feel I chose… poorly. However, the first meeting of the morning I chose to attend was Enabling Mobile for Business. Charnsin Tulyasathien, Sprint Group Manager, started off the session, which included three Sprint partners. He laid out the case for targeting business customers with mobile applications: 271 million mobile devices, 6.5 million mobile connected laptops, Bank of America’s mobile banking site has 1 million users. Mobile is becoming a bigger part of business.
The first partner to speak during that session was Eric Kowalchyk of Intuit. He outlined Intuit’s GoPayment system, which provides mobile payment processing. He spoke about the iterative process they went through to get a payment system that served the needs of mobile professionals in a clear, easy to use manner. He said: “Focus on the end user to end user experience.” Next up was Daniel Obodovski, director of business development at Qualcomm. He talked about Qualcomm’s location tracking system. He discussed some pretty interesting applications of location tracking devices. They are targeting cargo tracking, asset tracking and consumer devices, such as the Best Buy child-tracking solution. Following Daniel was Steve Hudson of Omnilink, a partner of Qualcomm. He told us a story about how Delta had lost his luggage and he was able to track it down into a warehouse in Las Vegas. One of the benefits of network-based LTS is that it doesn’t require visibility to Satellite, which is very useful for applications such as tracking Alzheimer’s patients.
Following those three partners Charnsin took the stage again to discuss the particulars of Sprint’s developer program. If you are interested in the program visit their site: http://developer.sprint.com or send e-mail to BAP@sprint.com. The developer program is free to join for those interested in teaming and co-marketing.
After that session I attended the Alcatel-Lucent presentation on their Open API service platform. Their API allows for some pretty comprehensive network-based services for mobile applications, including ‘geofencing‘. One of he opening slides of the presentation discussed the fact that very few applications ever reach a very large user base. The slide backed up the claim that there are very few iPhone App millionaires. What Alcatel-Lucent hopes to provide is a framework that will allow app developers to create more compelling applications. The services included the ability to detect users being online, opt-in tracking and more. Check out their site above for details. One thing to note is that although they are planning support for multiple carriers it seemed to be implied that they have not actually signed up other networks. They demonstrated how a partner developed an opt-in advertising campaign for REI that sent special offers to users who came within one mile of REI stores.
We got a chance to enter the exhibit hall to see the booths set up by Sprint’s partners. Of course, for me, the big draw was the Palm booth. Palm was just setting up the booth when I got there but they were soon up and running, showing off the Pixi and Pre. Manning the booth were lots of excited and friendly Palm folks. I got the opportunity to meet my Palm App Catalog rep Rob Katcher, which was really great.
Following this was the keynote speech by Sprint’s president of network operations Steve Elfman. Steve addressed the question: Why Sprint? The takeaway was that Sprint has the best devices and has taken an open approach. This is Sprint’s ninth open developers conference. He discussed how Sprint moved from a traditional provider-centric approach where they decided everything about what devices would run to what software and services would appear on those devices to a more open approach where the users and manufacturers could define those things. Sprint has certified 300 non-Sprint devices for use on their network. He described how they are already testing 4G in select cities and will be rolling it out to more cities. He then said that Sprint is doing away with the call forwarding fee in mid November. To drive home why this is important for Sprint subscribers he brought Brad Horowitz of Google onto the stage to discuss Google Voice on Sprint. It’s clear that unlike other networks, Sprint is embracing Google Voice and consumer choice.
Following this was a Q&A session with Sprint personnel. During the Q&A Sprint reaffirmed their commitment to open standards and open services. They’re actively looking at how they can support industry standard API’s, even where it may conflict with technologies they had been supporting, such as Titan, which was intended to be a Java-based mobile platform. There was also ominous discussion about tiered pricing for data. Sprint’s contention was that the unlimited plans were put in place to get people to adopt mobile data and encourage the development and usage of mobile software. I don’t see what benefit it would bring customers to limit them at this point.
The next session I attended was on BlackBerry mobile development. I don’t have anything to report on this session because I don’t think anything really stuck with me except that JavaScript will have full access to the services on the device with version 5.0. After that I attended the discussion on Sprint’s developer sandbox. This was a more interesting discussion about a testing platform that allows developers to test their use of Sprint’s API’s without having to access their live network. There’s a lot of power in the Sprint API so if you’re looking at developing services that take advantage of Sprint’s network API’s you should check this out. It is important to note that these API’s can be easily accessed from webOS applications.
I decided to skip the next session to stand in the long line to get a free BlackBerry Tour. I was successful in getting one, which I added to the HTC Hero I got last night. Using these two smartphones really makes me appreciate what Palm has done with webOS. Admittedly, I have not had a chance to really use these devices seriously but what’s clear is that for a user just picking up the phone for the first time the Pre really shines in usability.
After quickly ducking out of the BlackBerry session I went back to the exhibit hall to see what was going on there. Again, I made a beeline for the Palm booth and talked some more with the folks there. Kudos to Palm for having so many people who are excited about what they are doing. I must say that the dinner they served was a big cut above the lunch and breakfast they offered earlier.
On a more personal note, I had a chance to catch up with a cousin here in California and went to a fantastic ramen shop. I’m definitely going to be hunting for ramen shops back home!
Stay tuned for part 3! Again, you can follow ‘live’ on twitter by click here: http://twitter.com/Pre101