Amp’d, Telus bring BREW to Canada

A side effect of Amp’d Mobile’s recent launch with Telus Mobility was BREW’s first appearance in the Canadian market. Though Canada has several CDMA carriers, BREW’s main customer base, none of them have adopted the BREW mobile application platform though it has become popular with major carriers like Verizon Wireless and KDDI in Japan, as well as smaller providers in developing countries.

Amp’d, however, launched its mobile content portal over the Telus network, bringing the first BREW phones north of the U.S. border. Amp’d is not bringing the BREW content management solution or content library, though. As a data- and youth-focused MVNO, Amp’d is signing up for independent distribution deals and creating its own custom content, said Mike McSherry, senior vice president of emerging technologies for Amp’d, all of which is programmed in BREW and on customized BREW clients, but runs off Amp’d own management platform.

While the deal isn’t a huge win for Qualcomm in terms of subscribers—Amp’d is still a niche player—it gives BREW its first presence in what is traditionally a strong market for its other technologies but, until now, had sidestepped its content platform.