Another year is now behind us and Mikael Nerde, Head of Sony Ericsson Developer World, shares his thoughts on 2006 and his excitement about the plans for 2007.

For Sony Ericsson, 2006 has been a year of great achievements and a year where we really solidified our position in the mobile phone market. We released more phones than ever before and introduced Cyber-shot phones, another brand experience that only Sony Ericsson can bring into the mobile space. The mobile Walkman experience has evolved and is setting new standards for experiencing music on your mobile phone. There were just so many cool and inspiring things that were realized during this past year that I am truly excited about 2007. Before looking into the future, I'd like to highlight a couple of 2006's milestones from a Sony Ericsson Developer World perspective. Technology-wise, 2006 was the year of the platforms for us.

Mikael Nerde, Head of Sony Ericsson Developer World.

Java Platform 7 (JP-7)
For a long time Sony Ericsson has worked to create solid platforms to develop our products on and Java Platform 7 (JP-7) was a landmark experience for us. With JP-7 we created a solid Java Virtual Machine (JVM) with more features than we had in previous Java Platforms, including adding camera capabilities from Advanced Multimedia Supplements (JSR 234). We also made some impressive performance improvements to the platform both in execution and starting MIDlets. Continuing our Java Platform Strategy, JP-7 allows you to design and code for a range of phones, instead of phone by phone. It enhances and simplifies the development/porting cycle for you as well as offers a great consumer experience and a great development platform! We managed to bring the JVM so far down into our execution environment that today we see very few performance differences between Native and Java ME code. This is a very important achievement that has laid the foundations for the 2007 generation of Sony Ericsson mobile phones.

UIQ 3 platform 2006 was also an important year for Sony Ericsson and UIQ Technology. We developed a next-generation platform based on UIQ 3 which allows us to create a wider portfolio of products delivering different usage and consumer experiences. UIQ 3 is very strategic for us and in October we made the move to buy UIQ Technology from Symbian so we are better positioned to create products using it. This transaction is now in the final stages of EU acceptance. Upon completion, it will enable us to focus on moving the company and the UI experience to the next level. With this commitment to the UIQ platform and the sales volumes for our three UIQ 3-based phones increasing, 2007 will be an extremely positive year with many great opportunities for application developers. The UIQ 3 platform is so flexible and capable, and with Sony Ericsson Developer World offering great resources and support to help get you developing on this platform, I'm extremely excited to see what applications and solutions will be available in the months to come. Eclipse and NetBeans A lot of changes happened on the IDE tool side during 2006. To offer a stable and long term development environment to Developer World members, Sony Ericsson made the decision to actively commit to Eclipse and the development of this environment. Eclipse, as you know, is an open initiative and is supported by most major industry players. Eclipse will become a foundation environment for both C++ and Java development going forward. We also continued our close relationship with Sun Microsystems to enable the best possible Java development support for NetBeans users.

The UIQ 3-based M600 mobile phone.

The Developer World portal
Finally I'd also like to highlight the Sony Ericsson Developer World web portal. Throughout 2006 we had an internal project running which we called "Developer World 2.0". This has been an effort to enhance the services we have offered for the last couple of years and to add new features that would benefit your experience.

To mention a few: we upgraded the discussion forums with a new flexible searching and posting engine, we completely revised the searchable Knowledge Base, we introduced a Wiki to better allow you to share knowledge and information with your peers and upgraded the RSS feeds so you can add news to your Google and Yahoo homepages or other services, as well as a large number of smaller design changes, tweaks and optimizations. We based these enhancements on requests from you and I would like to thank you for your continued commitment and feedback. We will continue with this project into 2007 by offering even more services to enhance your Sony Ericsson Developer World experience.

In addition to new functionality, we also have developer resource sections on particular focus areas. We built on 2005's Mobile Java 3D gaming initiatives and added two new sections, one for Mobile Music and the other for Productive Mobility for UIQ 3 application development. Here we collected all relevant Docs & Tools, Tips & Tricks, Source Code, new articles, phone specifications and example apps in one location, making it easier for you to develop cool and interesting apps for our mobile Walkman portfolio and UIQ 3-based phones.

Looking forward to 2007
I think 2007 will be a defining year for Sony Ericsson. There are so many cool and exciting things we will be able to work together on. Sony Ericsson Developer World is committed to you; supporting your development and your route to market with your applications, content and games.

I am excited about the next few months and how we can bring even more value to you. We will focus a lot on community enabling features and adding value for everyone connected to Developer World. We will open up to Community Members some of the services that we previously offered only to our Premier Partners.

My 2007 New Years' resolution is, through Developer World, to make it easier and more beneficial than ever to bring your applications and content to market for Sony Ericsson mobile phones.
 
I wish you a very happy and rewarding 2007 and I am excited about what Developer World is offering you.

Mikael Nerde
Head of Developer World

 

More information:

• Introducing multi-tasking and improved gaming performance for new Java Platform 7 (JP-7) mobile phones>>
• Mobile Music Applications developer resources>>
• Productive Mobility for UIQ 3 apps developer resources>>
• Mobile Java 3D developer resources>>
• Visit the discussion forums>>
• Search the Knowledge base>>
• Developer World Wiki>>