Mobile developers look beyond the cool factor

Tomorrow's mobile devices will be all about the data and services to which they provide access, rather than how cool they look, conference delegates at Demo Mobile in California heard this week.

The event, which offers companies, mostly start-ups, the chance to showcase products to an audience of industry watchers and investors, saw presentations from Skype, Silicon Valley start-up Vazu and UK-based outfit Apps for Phones.

Opening the conference, Demo Mobile's executive producer Chris Shipley suggested that the system of the future goes beyond mobile and wireless devices to "service-based computing".

"Service-based computing delivers applications and data from a managed computing platform to a relatively simple end device," he said.

"This will put the onus of managing the computing environment on the service provider. Service-based computing liberates the end user to engage with the data."

Vazu showcased Vazu Seek and Vazu Click, applications that let users add a phone number to their mobile's address book through SMS simply by clicking on an icon, and to highlight text snippets and send it to their device again using SMS.

Apps for Phones launched an application development tool designed to simplify the creation of Java applications for mobile phones. It allows programmers to build software by dragging and dropping the desired features into their application.

"This is a software development tool that enables almost anybody to build great applications on all sorts of wireless devices," said chief executive Bill Colwill.

IP phone company Skype unveiled version 1.0 of its voice-over-IP, peer-to-peer client software for Pocket PC devices. A beta of the software has been available since March this year.

The application allows users to make VoIP calls using their handheld device when connected to the internet, effectively turning it into a mobile phone.

Skype told vnunet.com that the mobile version of its software should be seen as a strategic project, preparing the company for the advent of the upcoming WiMax high-bandwidth wireless standard.

"As WiMax grows, simple portable devices become your workhorse devices," said a spokesman.