Time for a "Platform" MVNO?

A week or so back, Russell Buckley published a post on The Frustrations of Java. In particular, he was speaking about J2ME, the Java platform for mobile devices. After a roundup of the issues that plague those of us using J2ME to deploy products, he concludes that perhaps WAP will end up winning because it's "good enough" in a number of respects.

Russell's right on about J2ME, about carriers, and about handsets. But WAP and its variants have been in the marketplace for over 7 years now, and while cellphones and their users have evolved, WAP continues to be an evolutionary dead end. Not extinct, but maybe only alive on a small remote island. Clearly not "good enough" for mainstream adoption so far.

So where does that leave us?

I believe the carriers are leaving massive cash on the table by retarding the progress of mobile-phone-as-computing-platform, which it definitely could be. Phones are today where PCs were in the mid 80s. Lots of apps, lots of different computers, not yet to the point where the "100% IBM PC Compatible" could became the platform to distribute applications. The "PC compatible" emerged not because it was superior but because its owner could expect to run all sorts of apps on it, and app vendors could expect all sorts of customers to have it. A sort of chicken-and-egg problem helped along in the by killer apps like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3.

In a recent conference call, a developer-relations rep from one of the carriers discussed moving to a more consistent J2ME implementation for their MIDP 2.0 phones. When they began offering phones supporting MIDP 1.0, he said, they let the handset OEM put any Java runtime they felt like on any phone. At first I howled in pain, thinking of the late nights that this laissez faire approach cost us who write code. But I realized: suppose this company had subjected the initial Java deployment to the same standardization and QA regimen that they use for voice-call service ... who knows how many years' delay would have ensued?

So I applaud the company for taking a chance on programmability of what had been a completely closed embedded device. This is the attitude we need, and that willingness to open up is the first half of the solution. The second half will need to address the problems Russell wrote about in his post. I don't know whether this ought to be a wholly new platform that phones support; a new version of Java (J5ME?) with a really tight specification and minimal room for ambiguity; or wider adoption of an existing OS like Symbian or Windows Mobile.

But I do have an idea: how about a MVNO whose differentiator is that it promotes regular handsets (not just high-end smartphones) as a general purpose platform for computing. Perhaps it offers J2ME with all the "extra" (JSRs), or more than one platform, the way some phones provide Symbian+Java, or WinMo+Java+Flash (Cingular).

In any case, on the developer side, there would be rock solid specs for how these phones actually behave, open APIs to the voice, network, storage, and embedded apps. On the consumer side, the phones would actually be promoted as computing devices for all sorts of work. More like the early Palm devices than the Treos. The MVNO would charge for the device and for the network connectivity and could pick handsets that are reasonably capable. Access to add/remove/configure apps would be completely open, and the ISVs could win or lose on their merits.

Would enough people subscribe to cover the overhead? Out of the gate, it's hard to say. Other phones/carriers/networks might seem "better." But wait until the apps start coming. It's why I don't still run a TRS-80 or a TI99/4A.