Press Release
Sophia Cradle Incorporated
Sophia Cradle Releases Tool for Migrating PDA Programs to BREW
Enabling the sharing of programs between BREW phones and other handheld devices such as PDA, iPod, PSP and NintendoDS
Abstract
KYOTO — November 2, 2005 — Sophia Cradle Incorporated (Headquarter: Kyoto; CEO: Kazunori Sugiyama), an innovative developer of mobile phone software, today announced to release a tool for migrating programs for PDA, iPod, Play Station Portable (PSP) and NintendoDS, which are written in the C programming language, to BREW. The tool consists of an svHacker and the technology of SophiaFramework that enables a developer to use static variables and embedded standard functions for ARM processors respectively in BREW programming. Sophia Cradle will distribute the svHacker to all SophiaFramework users today.
Note: svHacker and SophiaFramework are currently in Japanese only.
Full Story
As the number of mobile phone users increases, many applications that run on general handhelds are migrated to mobile phones. There are as many as 25,000 Palm applications registered to the developers' community of about 420,000 members around the world, and the number of applications sold for Sony's Play Station Portable amounts to 19.6 million. They are some of the examples of the potential applications that may be migrated to mobile phones.
Equipped with these handhelds such as Palm, PocketPC, Play Station Portable, iPod and NintendoDS are ARM [*1] processors. ARM has a 80% market share in the embedded device industry.
ARM processors are also embedded in BREW mobile phones. However, in BREW [*2] programming, static variables [*3], which may reduce program size and runtime speed, cannot be used even if they are usually part of the C programming language. Embedded standard functions [*4] for ARM processors, such as floating point processing, cannot be used either.
svHacker and SophiaFramework [*5] are the solutions to the problem. svHacker and the technology of SophiaFramework enable a developer to use static variables and embedded standard functions for ARM processors respectively in BREW programming. In this way, they overcome the BREW specification constraints so that programs such as handwriting recognition, written in C programming language for handhelds that are equipped with ARM processors, will be migrated seamlessly.
Sophia Cradle will distribute svHacker to all SophiaFramework users today.
SophiaFramework: /english/products/sophiaframework/
This Press Release: /english/news/pressrelease/2005/20051102.html
Note: svHacker and SophiaFramework are currently in Japanese only.
Note: svHacker is a development tool for BREW applications, which is developed solely by Sophia Cradle Incorporated. Therefore, it is not officially supported by QUALCOMM Incorporated and Sophia Cradle Incorporated shall not be liable for any performance caused by the use of svHacker. We strongly recommend that users consult the network operator who provides the BREW service.
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Terms
A British microprocessor manufacturer. The advantages of using an ARM processor are that the program size and the physical processor size is small, and that it does not require too much power. These advantages have led to ARM processors being widely embedded in control devices, mobile phones, PDAs and game consoles; all devices that often have limited memory capacity.
[*2] BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless)
The standard of mobile phone software developed by QUALCOMM Incorporated, released in January 2001. BREW applications work fast no matter what the underlying system software in the handset is. A user can download a compiled BREW application from the Internet and use it with any BREW-enabled handset. The worldwide spread of BREW is remarkable, and there are many network operators that provide BREW services, including Japan's KDDI which started offering them in February 2003. Recently, another Japanese network operator NTT DoCoMo has also started BREW services.
A variable which can be used in the entire program. The advantage of using a static variable is that the program size and runtime speed will be optimized, which especially fits mobile phones because the memory capacity is limited. However, without svHacker, a static variable cannot be used in BREW programming.
[*4] embedded standard function
A versatile function pertaining to a programming language, such as a trigonometric function, an exponential function and a logarithmic function. When a programmer uses an embedded standard function, he/she does not need to define it in the program.
Object-oriented development environment for BREW applications released by Sophia Cradle Incorporated in August 2002. It includes various program modules called classes that are needed to develop any kind of BREW applications, such as user interface, communication, graphic drawing and string processing. The technology of SophiaFramework is now being used in many of the business BREW applications and official KDDI applications that are top-sellers in Japan.
To learn more about SophiaFramework, please visit /english/products/sophiaframework/.
About Sophia Cradle
Sophia Cradle Incorporated is a mobile phone software developer which currently specializes in BREW C++, GUI middleware and mobile Java. Founded in 2002, Sophia Cradle aims to render services to the improvement of everyone's quality of life by creating innovative mobile Internet technology. For more information about Sophia Cradle, please visit www.s-cradle.com/english/.