Symbian founder calls for single Java apps store

Rating: Launches free promotional app for AQA

It is rather amusing to see the man that could be seen as the father of Symbian, Colly Myers, launching his first mobile app in years. Not for Symbian, mark you, but for Java. He also launched a tirade against the lack of a single marketplace for apps written using Java.

Ex-Psion man, Myers, was actually CEO of Symbian from 1998 to 2002. Since then he has run IssueBits which is the power behind the AQA [All Questions Answered] SMS service. It’s the best pub quiz cheat service there is.

While AQA 63336 has already answered more than 20 million questions for some two million customers, Myers and Myers and co-director Bill Batchelor decided to build an app to promote the service.

Myers told GoMo News that Java had been chosen because it worked on roughly 50 per cent of UK phones. Given that only around three million iPhones have been sold, that’s almost a ten times bigger market.

Colly Myers told us that the app had been written in-house and one of the biggest problems – identifying the handset’s phone number has been solved by AQA’s own provisioning system. Java isn’t normally able to query a handset for its phone number.

While creating a strategy for releasing the Java AQA app, Myers realised that to gain comprehensive coverage you’d have to negotiate with nine to ten different online stores.

That’s a mixture of operator owned portals – 02, Vodafone and Orange; plus a handful of OS based portals – Symbian, Android and Windows Mobile – along with handset vendors like Samsung and Nokia. Too much time for too little return.

So in his blog here Myers calls on Virgin, Three, TMobile, Orange, Vodafone and O2 to all get together and create a single app store for Java ME applications.

That said, by December AQA will also be offering an iPhone version of its app anyway. Asked why, Myers pointed out that Java doesn’t run on the iPhone, for starters. Plus there’s the obvious “buzz” around the iPhone.

More importantly, the UK’s three million iPhone owners are the obvious demographic for a service like AQA 63336. And Apple’s App Store makes it so easy to reach people.

Still, it says something about the Symbian marketplace if its father has chosen to avoid it. Though, to be fair, the app runs on all Nokia phones anyway.