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The WDN Symbian DevZone... Richard Interviews Chris Davis, Director of Managed Developer Programs at Metrowerks
by Richard Bloor, June 03, 2002
The need to foster a developer community could mean that handset manufacturers and
carriers have to divert resources from their core business. This dilemma is creating a
new business opportunity for Metrowerks (www.metrowerks.com), outsourcing of developer support & services,
an offering that SonyEricsson has adopted for the support of their new Symbian OS
phone the P800 and other SonyEricsson phones.
This week I had the opportunity to discuss this new trend in the wireless market with
Chris Davis, Director of Managed Developer Programs, at Metrowerks.
WDN: Chris, thank you for finding time to talking to WirelessDevNet, perhaps we could
start by just going over the background of Managed Developer Programs?
Chris: Managed Developer Programs is really a formalization of what Metrowerks has
been doing for several years. We have been creating loyal communities of developers
around several platforms, including the Sony PlayStation, the Palm OS and the Apple
platform. We understand the process of making a platform successful in the market, the
importance of having content when the platform launches, how to attract key developers,
what types of tools they need and how to support them.
I came on board about 7 months ago, from a Services background in Wireless and have
been working with my team to formalize these value-added services into a package that
makes the outsourcing of developer services possible.
Our focus to date has been very much in the wireless vertical market. We have the most
extensive exposure to different platforms within the wireless space, more so than any of
our competitors. This laser focus on wireless is a key reason why we are now in a
contractual relationship with SonyEricsson and Motorola.
WDN: How did the relationship with SonyEricsson come about?
Chris: Initially a lot of people talk to Metrowerks about our strength in tools and in
talking to us about tools they became aware of our Managed Developer Program. That’s
what happened with SonyEricsson. So we started talking around the Symbian SDK
front and then moved to talking about the Managed Developer Program services and it
grew from there.
WDN: What are the services you have packaged under the Managed Developer Program?
Chris: I can give you a run down of the services we are providing for SonyEricsson to
give you an idea of what we are offering.
From a technical basis we are creating software development kits for SonyEricsson’s
higher end, Symbian OS phones, starting with the P800, building on the work started
with our strategic alliance with Symbian.
Another big piece of the puzzle is that we provide an IT infrastructure, mainly an Internet
engine. SonyEricsson already have Ericsson Mobility World but we are now powering a
lot of the functionality behind it in the developer program area. For example in providing
technical support, giving developers globally access to our engineers via email.
Our support also goes further. Where SonyEricsson has someone who they view as
strategic we can put one of our technical support staff on a plane or in a car to go and
work through any application development issue with them on site. We think of our
technical support staff as pretty polished people, they understand multiple wireless
platforms and technologies and understand how the software interacts with our handset
partners’ devices. This is a real differentiator for SonyEricsson to be able to offer to their
developer partners.
One of the other significant services we offer SonyEricsson is application certification.
We will be leveraging third parties to certify a Developer’s application on key points so
that the developer can feel comfortable that the application works on a particular
platform and SonyEricsson can feel comfortable attaching their brand to it.
Certification is something that developers view as a necessary evil. We are working to
turn that around, differentiating ourselves from the rest of the industry by moving the
process earlier in the software development cycle. Rather than a Developer fully
constructing their application then handing it off to the certification partner and finding
it completely breaks down, we want to get involved earlier and stop this from happening.
So what we are trying to do is help put some stage gates into the ISV’s processes to help
them think about how the application works with the devices, with the network etc. This
will make the certification process at the end a more fluid event.
We are working through the final details and will be launching the Certification service
soon.
Then we are helping SonyEricsson in marketing all these services. This year we have
participated with SonyEricsson at CeBit in Hanover and CTIA Wireless in Orlando
Florida, where we joined them on their stand providing technical personnel and expertise
to interact with the developers. Helping with business development and describing what
the developer program is. Then at the Games Developer conference in San Jose
California we had SonyEricsson along with Motorola’s Personal Communications Sector
in our booth. This was a key leverage point for us. We have a great relationship with
many games developers because of our relationship with Sony, Nintendo and some of the
other big games platform providers. So we were able to introduce these gaming
developers to two large handset manufacturers. We told them the wireless story and
explained why they should get involved, showed them how they can make money by
doing wireless development. It was really compelling and a lot of value came from
introducing these players to games developers. So we are helping SonyEricsson by
leveraging our relationship and expertise around the developer community to drive
forward their efforts to build a developer base.
Also, I‘d like to point out that the MDP services go beyond what we’ve discussed for Sony
Ericsson. We have several other services that are key in building a successful
community.
Our Wireless test labs, based in the US, UK and Sweden provide a venue for a developer
to first introduce his or her apps to devices, networks and servers. Metrowerks is the
only tools company in the world to offer 2.5G network infrastructure (GPRS) plus CDMA
and GSM for testing to their developer community.
We provide a developer relations service that includes finding the right ISV or application
developer partners for our customer and forging that relationship.
Finally we offer full hosting of a Web Community. Our infrastructure and web offering
forms the central nervous system of a particular developer community. We enable a
customer to actively monitor and manage their developer partners through an interactive
Internet based engine.
WDN: You are currently making CodeWarrior available with the Beta version of UIQ, the
interface for the P800, how do you see future products evolving?
Chris: We take our direction from SonyEricsson as the customer and we are very much
in a consultative phase helping them predict what the developer market is going to ask
for and proactively meeting those requirements. It is a logical transition to go from the
high-end solution and move down to the low end as well but at this stage we have
nothing to report. Metrowerks works closely with device manufacturers like
SonyEricsson and Motorola and with platform vendors like Sun, Palm and Symbian to
bring products to the market that support the latest technologies as they are released, or
in some cases, such as some of our Symbian tools, even before they are released.
WDN: If a developer introduces themselves to CodeWarrior through SonyEricsson are
they tying themselves to SonyEricsson, for example are they precluded from using other
Symbian OS SDKs?
Chris: No, by buying CodeWarrior Wireless Studio 7.0 or CodeWarrior for Symbian OS
the developer has access to a multitude of SDKs not just specific to SonyEricsson or
Symbian. We have SDKs from Motorola, SPRINT, Siemens, Sun and the software is
compatible with Nokia SDKs and others. So it’s a window, the developer will be able to
access and develop for multiple handset manufacturers.
WDN: Metrowerks also runs CodeWarrior University that has free training for Palm,
Java, C++ and the CodeWarrior IDE. Are there plans for Symbian or SonyEricsson
based training?
Chris: Yes and there are two elements to this. We are providing assistance to
SonyEricsson, its something that we do for all our partners, in developing a curriculum
and training courses for on-line training that they will be offering. We are also
developing our own CodeWarriorU courses to cover Symbian and J2ME, which we hope
to introduce soon and like our other courses will be free. Our courses won’t be specific
to any of our handset manufacturer or carrier partners, we don't want to duplicate or
cause channel conflicts. Today there are Java certification courses, along with C++
programming and a dozen other courses available for free to anyone who comes to
CodeWarriorU.com. We believe it is the largest online University for developers with over
100,000 registered professionals.
WDN: Beyond SonyEricsson where do you see the Managed Developer Program going?
Chris: As you know SonyEricsson is not our only customer, we already have a
relationship with Motorola, which means two of the top three handset manufacturers
worldwide use our services today. The program is very attractive to anyone with a
platform. For a range of carriers and device manufactures we can allow them to focus on
their core competency and leverage our relationship with those developers doing robust
application work to help build developer communities, and ultimately ensure the
creation of attractive content which is what will make a platform successful. We know
who those people are, we deal with them every day and we have created an interface so
the manufactures and carriers can leverage those same developers for their platforms or
network. The growth for our Managed Developer Program goes beyond wireless as well
and into any vertical that has a platform requiring 3rd party application development to
make it a success.
WDN: Are you actively talking to anyone else about providing these services?
Chris: Yes, quite a few carriers based in the US, Europe and Asia as well as a host of
handset and mobile device manufacturers.
WDN: What is the story you are getting from them?
Chris: Its pretty consistent with the folks we have been talking to. Each is planning on
or have already running some sort of developer support program but they haven’t fully
thought out all the services required to support such a constituency. This awareness
comes alive during our discussions when we convey all the services we provide to
proactively manage developers.
As far as technologies, for the higher end phones Symbian is definitely an OS that they
are considering if they are not already implementing on their phones. J2ME is also a
consistent answer for the mid range phones. With the Asian manufacturers Linux pops
up a little bit more. We will see over time who will win or whether they will be co-
existing.
Symbian is gaining more momentum and will effectively compete with the likes of
Microsoft. Sun’s J2ME will be pervasive and will continue to co-exist with the Symbian
OS on several high end phones as well.
You can find more information on Metrowerks’ CodeWarrior at their web site
(www.metrowerks.com). Their on-line training can be accessed at CodeWarriorU
(www.CodeWarriorU.com). To see the Managed Developer Program in action visit Ericsson
Mobility World - http://www.ericsson.com/mobilityworld - (and follow the links to the
Open Zone and enter the Symbian section.
About the "WDN Symbian Guy" Richard Bloor:
Richard Bloor has 16 years experience in the IT industry. His earlier
work was largely in design and development of commercial and
manufacturing systems but more recently has focused on
development and test management of government systems.
Richard Bloor is the Mobile Applications champion at System
Architecture consultancy Equinox of Wellington, New Zealand.
Richard can be reached at rbloor@wirelessdevnet.com.
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