deCarta looks to LBS for a future?
September 9, 2008 5 Comments
So deCarta has a new product called deCarta Mobile. Everyone has their own mobile development platform, so why not offer your own? I’m sure they have some developers lined up to showcase their Java LBS platform so there will probably be some interesting apps coming forward. I can understand that deCarta brings much expertise to the LBS arena, but I’m just not sure that will matter much given the huge developer bases for Android and the iPhone (I await Glenn‘s comment below about Nokia mattering).
In the end I suspect this is a niche platform for users who need a very specific application and not meant for consumer applications (not saying that it isn’t possible, just there are other SDKs that developers might choose before this one). deCarta did a good job of explaining why they think they are important in the hosted service world in the comments of this post on the Virtual Earth /Live Maps Blog. Ignore all the porn links and go to the last comment (note to Microsoft, Live Spaces is a horrible blogging platform and using it just proves to everyone what a poorly thought out concept “Live” is).
The deCarta model might be just what some companies are looking for (being able to pick and chose providers or hosting your own data) and I suppose we’ll see how if deCarta Mobile takes off. For me Java is irrelevant on the mobile platform (iPhone) and on my desktop (I think only my Oracle management tools are Java) so I’m definitely not its market.
About James Fee
Hm… Enjoyed Mike Cottle’s robust comments and I see his point about differentiating mobile mapping products. But as a dumb consumer, I already have Google Maps on my phone (mmm…lovely Nokia N95…), so why do I need or care about another mapping interface? I’d rather use one I’m already familiar with. The deCarta screencast doesn’t work too well, and shows me nothing that Google Maps can’t do right now on my phone.
I can also see the point about the flexibility for service providers to use different data sources, have a guaranteed service level etc etc. But I’m betting that most consumer-oriented mobile web map applications will be pretty simple stuff, for which GM is perfectly adequate right now. As for more specialised GIS-type apps, well, a lot of people still seem sceptical about the viability of doing “real ” GIS work through a regular PC browser, so the market for phone-based GIS is probably going to be a fairly small niche too. But what do I know?
Quick not before I board a plane – we released an API and not an app. Google has no API on the mobile phone unless you use their entire platform (android) on 0 currently shipping handsets. There are over 1.5 Java phones in the wild.
Steve, that is true, but people have been creating LBS apps on the iPhone using Google or Microsoft’s APIs. You don’t have to go Android to go Google.
I’m just trying to figure out the carrot here for users. I’m sure there is one, but it gets lost in phrases like “drill down server”.
Hey James:
Quick note on out history in this space – we have been in the mobile world for years and some of our largest customers are in this space. What we did with this release was meet the demand of all the developers who came up to us at shows and said – “that’s great that you have that Ajax API, but I want to develop for the phone, what mobile APIs do you have”.
Having a mobile developer platform does not mean you have a good LBS offering for that platform – such as BREW or iPhone (and I would argue Blackberry as well). These companies have platforms but not ones that are LBS enabled. deCarta’s platform cuts across carriers and handsets. As long as J2ME (MIDP2.0) is on the phone then we should work.
A handset vendor (other than Nokia and Blackberry) came up to me at the show yesterday and asked me to see the application. I gave him the JAD and JAR file, he loaded it on his phone and away he went with a modern mapping interface. He immediately talked about going back to his team to discuss how they could build a branded service to put on all their J2ME enabled phones.
I agree that the iPhone is a hot platform and the next release of deCarta mobile client API will be for the iPhone. All Google and MS API driven iPhone sites either required a large engineering effort to turn their non-tiled service into a tiled interface or the company was big enough to work directly with MS or the GOOG. For most developers this will not be an option.
If by users you mean people who own the phones then you have the wrong idea of who this product targets. This product targets developers/companies who want to make applications for end users. Telenav, NIM, Loopt are our customers not their end users. This toolkit allows you to quicly build your own “google mobile” like application with your look and feel, with different maps, with your branding on it, and your data on it without ever having us put ads on it. This service is very much targeted at the developer wanting to develop consumer apps that are either LBS focused or even just spatially enabled.
Think like a developer on this one not as a end user. This market is not really like the GIS or BIM, so don’t use the same assumptions.
Correction to my last post – J2ME is on over 1.5 billion handsets world wide. The first version of google maps mobile, Loopt, Telenav, the winners of last years Navteq LBS challenge, all were written in J2ME first. We see the value in the iPhone and with it’s release we will have development platforms for the most ubiquitous handset language and with iPhone one of the hottest.
Thanks for sparking the discussion…
Well stated Steve.
So why the horrible press release and wacky website?