Developers are expected to share ad revenue with AOL by displaying in their applications advertising supplied by the Web portal…
“AOL Open Mobile Platform, which will enable developers to easily create rich applications, can run on any mobile phone, faces competition from Yahoo and others…”
Barcelona, Spain, — AOL announced on Monday the AOL Open Mobile Platform, which it plans to make available to developers this summer, including mobile versions of its online applications.
“Developers can add another mobile open-application development platform to the mix, this time from AOL.”
The new Open Mobile Platform, unveiled at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, will help stimulate innovation by providing developers with ready access to the tools and source code they need to build and distribute applications across all major mobile device platforms and operating systems, including BREW, Java, Linux, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry OS, Symbian, and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile.
The platform will be open so that developers can improve it as they like, said Jai Jaisimha, vice president of mobile product and technology development at AOL.
“As a result, developers will be able to create applications for a wide variety of mobile devices.”
In addition to providing easier access for developers to create their own mobile applications, AOL will incorporate its e-mail and video service into the platform, as well as other Internet applications it owns like Mapquest, Winamp and Userplane.
The AOL Open Mobile Platform is based on technology that AOL acquired from a company called Airmedia last year. It requires an application on the mobile phone. The program, which is so small, it is comparable in size to an average graphic, works in conjunction with back-end servers that take care of converting the application to the format the device requires.
The AOL Open Mobile Platform is based on proven technology acquired by AOL that has been deployed across more than 150 different handsets on carrier networks in the U.S. The platform will consist of three components: an XML-based, next-generation markup language; an ultra-lightweight mobile device client; and an application server.
A dynamic presentation layer will allow for rapid deployment of new features and easy optimization for a wide variety of mobile devices, allowing developers to build and update applications once, and then distribute them across all supported devices and platforms.
Currently, developers who want to write applications for mobile devices face a daunting task because they must customize their application for the various popular phone operating systems. “So what this platform does is eliminate the need to learn all those different platforms because you can use a device-agnostic markup language,” said Jaisimha. The platform uses an XML-based markup language.
Developers also would be able to share ad revenue with AOL by displaying in their applications advertising supplied by the Web portal. Such ads would include clickable banner ads.
AOL’s idea has benefits over some other platforms. For example, developers who write applications in the Symbian environment or who plan to write Android applications are limited to phones running those operating systems.
But AOL is not alone in its approach. Java Micro Edition, which runs on the majority of phones, was designed to allow developers to create Java applications that run on many phones. However, Java applications still often must also be tweaked for particular handsets. Plus, phone manufacturers must license JME from Sun if they intend to alter the program at all, which most do.
The new initiative from AOL comes as rival Internet Company Google is also working on an open-source mobile platform. Google’s “Android” platform is gaining much of the attention at this week’s mobile event.
“The use of mobile services continues to increase at a steady rate and for any developer looking to build applications for this growing space, the AOL Open Mobile Platform could not make it any easier,” said Steve Murphy, Senior Vice President of AOL. “Our new open platform will provide developers with a new breed of tools, including source code, for creating robust mobile services and will encourage product innovation.”
“AOL also faces competition in Yahoo, which recently released documentation that lets developers build mobile widgets. That means AOL will compete with it for developer attention.
“AOL is committed to providing developers around the world with access to our core technologies which give them the ability to build and deliver innovative new products,” said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President of AOL.
“Mobile is an important example of how we are opening AOL’s products to the developer community and providing access to new open tools and source code. As more developers leverage our open technologies, we look forward to seeing exciting new products that serve a global audience.”
In addition, AOL faces the hurdle of distributing the handset application, a notable challenge because mobile users are typically disinclined to download anything onto their phones. Because the client is so small, developers can build it into their applications, so end-users could download the client along with the application, Jaisimha said. “But we also certainly hope and expect that carriers and device manufacturers will integrate the platform into devices,” he said.
AOL is now entering into talks with developers who want to begin working on the platform immediately. It will otherwise keep developers up-to-date on the availability of the platform on its developer site.
AOL parent Time Warner last week said it would separate AOL’s subscriber-losing dialup business, a move that analysts said could lead to a sale or spin off into a separate company.
AOL expects to release the Open Mobile Platform this summer. More information on the AOL Open Mobile Platform can be found at http://dev.aol.com/openmobile.