Andy Seybold: Brewing Content

Andy Seybold writes his regular Commentary 4Mobility column about Qualcomm's (QCOM) annual BREW developers conference in San Diego at the end of May. Seybold covers the presentation by John Stratton, Chief Marketing Officer for Verizon Wireless, that was also written about last week by Steve Palley at Foci Mobile.

Seybold provides an in-depth account with analysis of Stratton's presentation and offers up an abundance of data points. He concludes with the following:

While all is not roses for BREW, wireless operators such as Verizon are coming to understand that merely putting more content up on their site isn't going to sustain their wireless data business. They have to invest in making it easier to find applications and services, promote them to their customers and continue to work with developers to innovate and expand their offerings.

I believe Verizon will accomplish these tasks in pretty short order and Qualcomm will continue to enhance BREW, the most successful developers platform in the wireless world. These problems and their fixes are not specific to BREW and the Verizons of the world. They are beginning to take their toll on other networks and developers as well.

John Stratton's main message for the BREW developers community was one that cannot be emphasized too much: Concentrate on the customer experience! Poorly designed software may run faster on today's networks, but that does not mean it will be more acceptable. It needs to be optimized and it needs to sizzle!