Addressing Fragmentation

A letter from Martin Wrigley, UTI Chairman
Director of Technology, Orange Partner Program

Welcome to the new Java Verified program.

We have been working hard to get this new website, the new Submission Portal and the new UTC 3.1 test criteria ready for you in time for our re-launch at JavaOne 2009. 

We've redesigned this website to be much clearer and easy-to-use and we'll be keeping it up-to-date with news, information and new resources. We also want to make sure that it is a place where you can make your voice heard and communicate your needs and will soon be adding new interactive tools to facilitate this.

The new Java Verified Submission Portal is also simpler and more efficient and offers the ability to get R&D certificates for signing your application and making it ready to test on the devices.

With these new systems and the new test criteria (UTC 3.1), which offer a streamlined test process, we feel that we have made some great steps forward in making your testing process less time-consuming and more cost-efficient.

A major roadblock to getting good quality Java applications to market quickly is fragmentation. This has bedevilled the Java mobile market place for so long that many people are just accepting the problem and trying to work around it through the creation of hundreds or thousands of SKUs. 

At Java Verified we recognize that we have a part to play in fighting fragmentation and driving better standards. To this end, we are encouraging a number of initiatives. The newest is JATAF (Java Application Terminal Alignment Framework) which has produced an open source set of tests and a test platform to prove the compliance of any handset. As an open source project, it is looking for contributions from all parties so that we can collectively build a comprehensive set of tests that detect handset Java platform problems so they can be fixed. Far better than having bugs continue through generations of handsets!

We also believe that many application providers can produce fewer versions of their applications to cover more handsets. Each additional SKU adds to the costs - testing, signing, ingestion and support costs are all increased. And it reduces the availability across handsets if each one is closely targeted to one device.

With the new UTC 3.0 test criteria, we are promoting a set of guidelines for developers that tackle real fragmentation issues and offer solutions without creating a SKU for every device. These guidelines have been proven to work and reduce testing time and costs. In fact, we have seen one application provider reduce their number of SKUs from 20 to 8 for a particular application by applying the guidelines and they covered more handsets!

Speed to market and quality of product are two important issues that affect everyone in the business, and we want to do everything we can to assist.

So we hope you like what we have done so far and we encourage you to help us on the next stage of our journey with great suggestions for how we can continue to improve!