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The WDN Symbian DevZone... Sony Ericsson Developer Support
by Richard Bloor, September 30, 2002
Sony Ericsson's approach to support for developers targeting the forthcoming
P800 has been the subject of much discussion on various Symbian forums. This
week Richard discusses their strategy with Ulf Wretling, Senior Manager, Third
Party Program at Sony Ericsson.
The Sony Ericsson P800, due for release before the end of the year, brings the
final of Symbian’s three styles of interface to market. Sony Ericsson have
engaged Metrowerks to provide the support for developers who want to build
applications for the P800, however some of their initial activities have drawn
criticism from the developer community because of the costs, particularly when
historically Symbian SDKs have been available free and usable with budget tools.
This week I talk to Ulf Wretling, Senior Manager, Sony Ericsson Developer
Program about these and other issues around development for the P800.
WDN: Ulf perhaps I can start by asking about why Sony Ericsson decided to
engage Metrowerks to provide tools and support for the P800 development.
Ulf: Symbian, as you know, has a strategic partnership with Metrowerks to
provide development tools for Symbian OS. Symbian use these tools internally,
so choosing them for the P800 was really a natural decision. Even so we had
looked at other tools, but felt that the CodeWarrior toolset was superior with
facilities like on-device target debugging, which means that the developer can
really see what is going on as they debug their P800 code.
In looking at how to support our developers we realized that they have stringent
requirements and that, if we started from scratch, it would take time to get a
service up to speed. Also these types of services are not really our core business.
Again we looked at the market place and scrutinized a number of companies that
have been providing this type of support, some for a number of years.
Metrowerks certainly have the widest experience in this area, they run a number
of support services already, particularly in the games area, including one for
Sony’s PlayStation. Also the feedback we got from developers about Metrowerks
was good, they are experienced and professional. Furthermore, they have the
support infrastructure and lots of ideas about how we can help support the
developer community better, basically all the things we want to achieve.
WDN: You initially launched the service with the UIQ SDK, Metrowerks
CodeWarrior tools bundled with support. This move drew some negative
comment from developers, particularly the hobbyists and smaller development
shops. Why was this approach adopted?
Ulf: The rational was this. To begin with, working with Beta SDKs is costly both
in time and money for us, the tools supplier, and the developer. We knew that if
we had many hundreds of developers using the Beta SDK we would not have
been able to provide good support. So we wanted to concentrate on a small group
of developers who could really exercise the SDK and tools, and who were likely to
create applications that add value to the P800 when it is launched. In addition
the number of phones available was, and to some extent still is, limited. As you
will appreciate the availability of prototypes is an essential part of any Beta
program and that also limited the number of developers we could support. Based
on those facts we decided that bundled support would give developers the
opportunity to be involved, but limit numbers to those who were serious about a
commercial commitment to the P800.
Also previously available Symbian SDK’s have used Microsoft’s Visual C++ 6.0 (a
development tool many developers have invested in), but it is no longer available
for purchase from Microsoft, having been replaced by Microsoft Visual C++ .Net.
With Symbian OS version 7, Symbian’s choice of IDE is Metrowerks CodeWarrior.
For C++ developers this would have been an additional cost regardless of the
approach we took.
However, all developers are important to us. For the newly released CodeWarrior
2.0 we have changed the arrangements so that there is no requirement for a
support contract to buy the tool.
Also, the UIQ SDK is now available free to download from our developer web site
so Java developers can build applications using their existing tools. I know some
people felt that our initial approach meant that we were charging for the SDK, I
hope that now we have made it available publicly everyone will realize we were
not and have never intended to charge for the SDK.
WDN: The Application Proclamation, the competition to find 50 applications to be
launched with the P800, also required support to be taken out. Presumably the
thinking was similar to the Beta program?
Ulf: Again there have been a few questions about our approach to the
competition. However for the launch of the P800 we want to ensure that there
are a number of really good applications available. To do this we need to engage
the top developers who are already successfully building applications for Palm,
Pocket PC and Nokia. What we want to do is get those who have a solid business,
and are making money, onto our platform. These people are quite happy with the
arrangements for the competition, particularly as many already have support in
place. Also we believe that the benefits to the winners of the P800 Application
Proclamation are significant. Their applications will be highlighted during the
Sony Ericsson P800 marketing activities and thereby associated with a world-
leading consumer brand, as well as featured on Handango, the leading online
marketplace for wireless applications. This is a great opportunity for developers
around the world who sometimes don't have the market resources themselves to
successfully market and launch applications.
With that said, all developers are important to us and in the future it is likely that
we will run other competitions that are targeted at a wider audience and are free
to enter.
We are a relatively small company and we believe it is important to have a
compelling portfolio of applications available when we launch the P800. If you
look at competing devices there are probably half a dozen applications that help
drive their sales - it’s not the large majority of applications that do this. So we
are looking for a few good entertainment and a few good productivity applications
in addition to the embedded ones. Because we have to prioritize we chose
initially to target established developers. We are, as you will have seen, adjusting
the program so that more developers can get access to the P800 development
tools.
WDN: For developers who are interested in building applications for the P800
what is it value proposition?
Ulf: What is important to developers is that they can get a large install base for
their applications so they can make money from their efforts. We believe we have
a compelling package in the P800 that will sell well. We have been getting
positive feedback about the P800 being a desirable phone, that the combination
of phone and PDA in such a small device will be very popular.
The large color touch screen will be very useful for browsing and quick input. It’s
a triband product, which means a greater geographical spread. Naturally it has
GPRS, so it offers high-speed connectivity. For a device of this size it has a fair
amount of memory, 12MB plus Memory Stick Duo which currently allows an
extra 16Mb of storage to be added. Thanks to its CPU architecture it’s also fast
and efficient. It can run complex and powerful applications, like Sybase
iAnywhere, and do things like 128 bit encryption which were not possible on a
device of this size only a few years ago. Developers will also soon realize how
powerful this phone is. Even if 3G has not yet been commercially deployed, a
number of advanced services can be offered to the end-user already today thanks
to the P800.
Also for developers, the quality of the development tools is important. We believe
CodeWarrior is one of, if not, the best Development Tools available. We also know
that the support needs to be good. Today we can guarantee qualified technical
support - it’s not for free, but we feel it is good value for money when compared to
the time a developer may spend trying to resolve an issue internally.
WDN: In building a developer base we have seen Nokia also embrace the Visual
Basic community with their implementation of the AppForge tool. Also AppForge
have suggested they are looking at a UIQ implementation. What is
SonyEricsson’s position on this?
Ulf: Currently we are targeting Java and C++ developers and they are our first
priority. There is obviously a big group of Visual Basic developers out there. It
would be interesting for us to target them too and AppForge could be a way of
doing this. At present we are watching to see how this goes on other platforms
and at this stage we have no definite plans.
WDN: One of the advantages of the Symbian OS is that it provides a standard
base over a number of different device types, but the developers are still having to
deal with different SDKs. Do you believe this is a problem?
Ulf: For us Symbian is key, as it is for our friends in the Symbian community.
There have been some negative comments about the possible fragmentation
within Symbian because of the different interface formats and the development
tools. We are having discussion about how to make things as simple as possible
for developers to target all the Symbian phones. We are looking at tools and
specifications, and how we can co-operate to make it as easy as possible for
developers to deploy applications on all Symbian devices.
WDN: Ulf thank you for talking with WirelessDevNet.
Ulf: No problem, can I just add before we finish that your readers may be
interested to know that we are currently updating the white paper on the P800 to
include updates like the Sony Memory Stick Duo. We plan to have it ready and
released by the beginning of October.
About the WDN Symbian Editor, 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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