Mobile widgets get suddenly take off
25 Apr 2008 | 13:44 BST
Jack and JIL
IT CAN'T be pure co-incidence that Nokia announced extended widget support one day before three leading operators declared their intention to create a shared labs facility. What will the lab do? Standardise widgets, of course.
The three operators involved in the project, Vodafone, China Mobile and Softbank, are more closely linked that you might first expect. Vodafone owns a tiny chunk of China Mobile and Softbank bought Vodafone's Japanese network.
Anyway, the beast they intend to unleash is called the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL). After wittering on about emerging technologies and market demand, the press blurb finally confesses that the real motivation is to, "focus on the rapidly growing areas of mobile internet services, such as mobile widgets."
Whereas the day before Nokia announced it was extending the "capabilities of its Web Run-Time offering allowing creation of personal and context aware widgets [on the S60 platform." Pretty similar, huh?
What the JIL wants to ensure is that these widgets run on the majority of handset platforms which the three operators have sold to subscribers. Not just Symbian and the S60 platform. The JIL said it would welcome the co-operation of vendors so it probably hopes Nokia will give it a helping hand.
What the three operators really want is control. They've dressed this up as "safeguarding customer security, data privacy and billing systems." However, what they really want to ensure is that the widgets come through them. And not through the auspices of the latest rivals – the Web 2.0 companies.
And the rumoured venue for the lab will be in Europe. The UK, possibly. µ
© 2007 Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 2007