Ericsson Labs’ Mobile Java Push API enables feature-rich content to be pushed directly to a mobile phone, meeting a surging interest in push services among developers.

Johannes Willig is one of the research engineers at Ericsson Labs responsible for the Mobile Java Push API, which was released in February 2009. He and his team have been working with mobile push technologies for some time and gradually realized that this would be an excellent capability to incorporate as one of Labs’ API offerings. 

Willig says they are targeting “long-tail” developers, who want to experiment with push technologies to create innovative, feature-rich applications.

What kind of applications can you create with it?
The Mobile Java Push API enables you to push content directly to a mobile phone. This type of service is suitable for applications that always require the latest information without the need to frequently poll for updates. And since the client application can be “sleeping” while waiting for updates, push is also very energy efficient and a battery saver 

Push technologies open up a wide range of innovative services. A typical example is push e-mail, where the user is notified immediately when an e-mail is received. Other examples are different types of notification services where a group of people is updated simultaneously with the most recent data. 

Do you see any trends in relation to your API? 
Push technology has gained a lot of momentum in recent years. It started with the push e-mail service pioneered on Blackberry phones  Since then, the interest has grown steadily. I believe that network-initiated content transfer will be a frequently used feature in future web and telecommunication services.

What feedback have you had so far?
Users tell us that the functionality is useful. Through many discussions with developers, we also realize that they have lots of ideas on how to mix push with other capabilities, creating interesting mashup services. One example is pushing out specific information depending on the location of the mobile user. 

What are your plans for the future?
We plan to support more types of clients, and have already started working on Android support. We also have plans to introduce feed entries from specific sources – enabling news push for example from CNN or BBC – as well as to improve the actual push mechanism, making it more efficient.

By Benny Ritzén

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