There are some five billion mobile devices in the world and only one billion PCs. So they should collectively be a natural target client for cloud-delivered services. The fact that they are still not is a testament to the diligence with which mobile designers and vendors continue to pursue the cause of product differentiation.
But with the next generation of smartphone clients now starting to appear, the need is growing for applications that can synchronise data with other applications running on other client types. That capability will allow more comprehensive and rich services to be created that give real added value to the users and therefore stickiness to the service providers.
Funambol is the largest open source project for mobile devices around, with the objective being the synchronisation of any data with any mobile device.
“The biggest problem is the shear diversity of platforms out there,” said Hal Steger, vice president of marketing for Funambol. “The PC market is simple by comparison, there is the Windows PC, and the Apple Mac is starting to come back strongly. There is also Linux, so there are three families of devices. But in the mobile world there are a minimum of 15 to 20 different families.” Steger in fact takes it further and includes devices such as domestic white goods and a wide range of other devices.
As an example of what he means, he pointed to how car maker BMW is using Funambol technology to provide wireless synchronisation of up to the minute corporate data with `road warriors’ mobile devices, while they are on the road. This is also an example of how the technology is pointing to the potential possible by combining the cloud with mobile technology.
Obviously, the real key to making this effective in the marketplace is the use of protocol standards that make data transfer and synchronisation a straight forward issue. Equally obviously, the mobile systems vendors are still at the stage in their development where differentiation, particularly at the technology level, is considered more important for users – and indeed by users – than the level of mobile services that can become possible through synchronisation and interoperability.
The primary standard used by Funambol is Synchronisation Markup Language (SyncML), which is also now known as Open Mobile Alliance Data Synchronisation Device Management. To date, some one billion mobile devices have SyncML built in. Nokia is the primary supplier, though others come from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, and Siemens.
“To get round this, we use the open source community to develop mobile-specific SyncML clients, which are then contributed to the community,” said Steger. “That does mean they are hand-coded, which can take a bit of time, but this does mean that most of the mobile marketplace is covered. There is currently a raging debate within the mobile industry as to whether they should develop native applications for each phone or for the Funambol client.”
Funambol has developed two versions of its software, The Community version is targeted at applications developers, and is a free download. According to Steger, this has around 90% of all the Funambol code in it. The Carrier version is aimed at the commercial marketplace such as device vendors, mobile service operators and large software vendors, and is sold for real money.
“Their biggest problem now is how do they address the biggest audience?,” he questioned. “Do they have to produce one version of an application for Android, another version for iPhone, and another for Blackberry. They want one solution that covers as many phones as possible.”
