Java Vendors Back Media-Rich iAppliance API

By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(04/23/02, 01:16:39 AM EDT)

Fremont, Calif. - Five Java software firms have organized the beginnings of what they hope will be an industry-wide standard Java-based framework for the delivery of media-rich services to second generation mobile iAppliances. The companies include Beatnik, Cybiko Inc., Morphink, Insignia Software and PacketVideo.

Mobile data services such as gaming, video messaging, graphical enterprise applications and music are on the radar screen of many companies hoping to provide web services and content to a wide range of entertainment and information-based iAppliances. But the use of multimedia content has been constrained two limitations: no common specification for creation and delivery and the limitations of fixed-function mobile phones.

The companies are hoping that a new standard built around Insignia's new Mobile Media Framework provisioning-infrastructure software will allow carriers to focus on providing services rather than creating multiple proprietary frameworks for their delivery.

Mobile Media Framework, part of the Insignia Mobile Foundation software, combines an open API it helped develop under the Java Community Process with a native code architecture to accelerate Java-based media content. In addition, the Mobile Media Framework is extensible through Secure System Provisioning (SSP) server software developed by Insignia. SSP enables wireless carriers to provision rich media capabilities, codecs, and other system level code to the Mobile Media Framework after the point of sale, and as the market demands them.