Verizon's Brew Stirs Up Wireless Services

Verizon's new service is based on Qualcomm's Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW), a distribution service and platform that lets Verizon customers download a variety of applications and run them on a thin client made especially for cellular phones.

Verizon initially plans to offer several games, light productivity applications and ring tones via BREW, which will be downloadable from its Web site.

Pricing for the applications will vary, but customers will be able to try out most applications before purchasing them.

In many cases, customers can purchase applications on a per-use basis, such as 99 cents for 10 plays, or on a monthly subscription basis. All downloads are automatically charged to a customer's monthly cellular bill.

While the initial launch is aimed at individual customers, the wireless carrier expects to release a number of innovative BREW services for solution providers and their corporate clients in 2003, said Jim Straight, Verizon's vice president for data and Internet services.

Straight said Verizon and Qualcomm, San Diego, are working with developers to help them deploy applications for the corporate market.

Qualcomm, for example, said its BREW version 2.0 will include SSL and HTTPS support for more secure online shopping, banking and stock transactions. The new version also will support standards such as HTML and SHTML to provide Internet browsing capabilities.

The first version of the BREW 2.0 software developer's kit and porting kit is available now. Handsets based on the new version are expected by early next year.

Verizon, meanwhile, is working on a hosted service that will allow corporate customers to automatically update and manage BREW applications running on company cellular phones, according to Straight.

"We are looking to use BREW as a distribution point," he said.

Straight said Verizon expects to work with a number of solution providers that are developing custom handset applications for corporate customers, and also directly with enterprise accounts.

One developer working with the BREW model is Wayne Yurtin, CEO of Rocket Mobile, based in Los Gatos, Calif. Although Yurtin has been developing solutions for PDAs since the days of the Apple Newton, he is now focusing all of Rocket Mobile's resources on cellular handsets.

"Handsets are the largest growing market within the software engineering space," he said. "The business from a software product standpoint will be 10 times what it is today."

Verizon Wireless alone maintains about 30 million subscribers nationwide, a number that dwarfs current handheld market penetration, Yurtin said.

"Those are staggering numbers," he said.

Rocket Mobile is selling BREW-based pocket expense, currency converter and business-services directory applications over Verizon's network, according to Yurtin. For each of these downloaded applications, Rocket Mobile receives 80 percent of revenue generated, making it a lucrative split for the developer, he said.

Verizon's Straight declined to comment on the company's revenue-sharing plan.

Rocket Mobile also is working on custom applications for the Fortune 500, Yurtin added. Although he declined to reveal specific clients, he said company developers are working on projects ranging from employee directories to ways to access Siebel Systems data on handsets.

Another corporate-based project in the works from Rocket Mobile is a proprietary BREW-based technology that allows corporate users to view specific Web data on their handsets. Yurtin hopes to use the technology to allow corporate users to view company data such as employee directories and intranet information from their cellular phones.

While Yurtin and Verizon are clearly bullish on BREW, both say that they also will be supporting J2ME.

Straight said Verizon expects to be able to support J2ME applications by 2003.