There is currently little known about SIM-based applications among the worldwide developer community. The MDP-SIMagine partnership strives to change this. For MDP, J2ME was the future of mobile technology but now, SIM-based applications are the way to go. Axalto, the world’s leading provider of microprocessor cards, has organised the SIMagine programme for 6 years and they are still going strong. The SIMagine Developer Community aims to provide the essential resources to help developers design and develop successful SIM-based services using SIM Toolkit in (U)SIM cards. Now, for the first time ever, the developer is collaborating with Maxis to advance the mobile application industry.

The Aim

SIMagine’s aim is to market mobile applications worldwide. The MDP-SIMagine partnership is steered towards increasing awareness of SIM-based applications among Malaysian developers. The Programme also targets to educate mobile application developers, equip them with technical training to create their applications and expose them to marketing strategies.

JAVA SIM

Currently, most mobile applications are stored on the mobile device itself. JAVA SIM cards, launched in September 2004, were world-first. With 256K storage space, they are capable of holding mobile applications, which can be used on various mobile devices. There are 1.4 billion SIM card users worldwide, of which only 100 million uses JAVA SIM. The premise of JAVA SIM is the fact that there is a huge potential market for this new generation of SIM cards. Among the benefits of JAVA SIM is that there are different versions of the card and it is more manageable than the current SIM cards.

Workshops

MDP-SIMagine held their first collaborative workshop entitled SIMagine JAVA card (JAVA SIM) Application Development in April 2005, discussing the possibilities of advancement for SIM-based application development. The second workshop in May 2005 discussed the evolution of the SIM card as well as the benefits, roles and evolution of the JavaCard.

The Future

Axalto plans to put up an application bank online where applications developed by MDP-SIMagine and other corporations will be available worldwide. This will help reduce the development cycle time and will decrease the go-to-market time span.


Visit the SIMagine website here.