Mobile Computing & Wireless Application Development
- BREW From Qualcomm -

Qualcomm announced a new development platform for Wireless application development in February 2001. It is called Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless, or BREW. 

Features & Functionality 

• Main functionality is downloads of wireless applications

• Designed specifically for smartphones

• It includes telephony features - somewhat better than J2ME but in CDMA.  If you want to use J2ME on Motorola's iDEN network, use Motorola development tools.

• Supports CDMA only networks that use Qualcomm processors 

Competing Products or Development Environments

• J2ME tool kits from Sun, Motorola and others  - supports multiple devices even though you have to write applications for each device separately.  Go to J2ME page.

• MicrochaiVM from HP

Resources & Vendor Products

• Visto Corporation - testing BREW development kit

• Wireless Knowledge - Planning to develop products on BREW - Please note Qualcomm and Microsoft are major investors in Wireless Knowledge

MobileInfo Advisory: It is still too early to see if BREW will get a lot of traction. For CDMA networks with stronger telephony features, developers should consider this.  It is not very open at this stage.