Qualcomm tackles the any-device app store

Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) today fulfilled its long-term promise of separating its BREW content and distribution platforms, announcing today the launch of Plaza Retail, a set of software tools that allows operators or any third-party content retailer to support application stores on any store, operating system or network.

With Plaza Retail's launch, Qualcomm is offering an open platform to compliment its traditionally closed content retailing system, BREW. When Qualcomm first launched BREW, it controlled every element of the value chain: It preloaded the BREW client in its CDMA and wideband CDMA chips, controlled the content and application certification program, managed the distribution system and even created its own operating system, in which all of its applications ran (BREW stands for Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) to compete with the more widespread Java runtime. While Qualcomm won some sizable customers for BREW—the largest being Verizon Wireless—the platform had limited appeal outside of the CDMA community. That led Qualcomm to re-evaluate its BREW strategy

Since 2005, Qualcomm has been taking steps to decouple BREW's various components and open up the platform to the wider development community. The launch of Plaza retail appears to be the culmination of that long process. Launched last year at Qualcomm's annual BREW developers' event, Plaza started out as widget-based content platform that hooked into any phone's mobile browser.

With Plaza Retail, however, the platform has evolved into a full-fledged content retailing and distribution platform, similar to the advanced application stores that have sprung up throughout the wireless industry. Unlike the app stores of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) or Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM), Qualcomm's Plaza doesn't support a single phone or category of phones, though. Instead it's designed to run over the lowliest of wireless browsers as well as the most high-end of operating systems, said Brian Vogelsang, director of product management for Qualcomm Internet Services (QIS).
"All we need to run Plaza Retail on any device is a WAP browser or the Plaza client," Vogelsang said. "It is truly agnostic."

Plaza Retail consists of three components: A merchandizing engine allows an operator to set pricing and licensing terms; customize its own portal with promotions, layout and placement; and personalize its offer to its customers through segmentation and analytics tools. Its Connection ecosystem functions as the developer community for the platform, where content publishers can access the application programming interfaces of device makers and carriers. Plaza's Storefront is a multi-platform client, which in its simplest form requires not a single line of code on a device—just a mobile Web bookmark—but in its most sophisticated forms is a dedicated client running natively on a mobile operating system.