Qualcomm BREWs up European strategy

CDMA pioneer Qualcomm yesterday stepped up plans to push BREW in the GSM space, with the introduction of deliveryOne - a content delivery platform designed to introduce BREW, streaming video, 3D gaming and the uiOne user interface through a device and infrastructure agnostic medium. The initiative is to be carried out through a co-operative marketing agreement with UK mobile content delivery firm Elata to accelerate the content delivery system and provide support for BREW, Java, OMA, streaming content, ring tones and images.

Qualcomm said the jointly developed content delivery system combines BREW with Elata's platform agnostic offering to consolidate all content services for all device platforms under a single service delivery system, providing operators with the ability to choose from multiple products - enabling them to remain committed to their existing device portfolio while evolving their line up to include handsets with new capabilities.

Despite the fact that it has been technically possible to run BREW over GSM for some time now, the CDMA pioneer has struggled to gain acceptance for its offering in Europe. However, Elata counts operators such as 3, Orange, Amena and Optimus in its customer base. Qualcomm initiated its BREW GSM strategy in October with the US$36 million acquisition of UK developer Trigenix, which is developing a GSM user interface for BREW and has been doing some work with Elata.