The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), an international
specifications setting body, announced availability of API specifications for
more than 40 network and device resources, with various language and protocol
bindings.
These new standards allow the creation of interfaces to
the service infrastructure residing within existing networks and on devices. By
deploying these programmable connections, service providers can increase their
developer base, reduce time-to-market for new applications and services, and simplify
wider deployment of existing applications and services.
“As the applications market has exploded with
hundreds of choices of APIs that offer the same functionality, OMA has answered
industry demand for standardized access to fundamental resources,” said
Musa Unmehopa, Chair of OMA’s Technical Plenary.
“By deploying OMA API specifications, operators can
now expose their specific assets for the common functions required by every
developer of mobile applications — no matter what signaling protocols, platforms
or other APIs they use,” Unmehopa added.
Additional operating systems, development platforms and
network capabilities have now become established in the market. This has added
new market channels for existing global customers. At the same time, the ever-expanding
number of APIs has fragmented the application development and service delivery
markets.
“Estimates for the market potential of applications
and services are in the range of tens of billions of dollars in the next four
to five years,” said Fred Harrison, chairman of the Board of OMA.
“Without standardization to support wide scale
market growth, developers may find difficulty in working with a range of
service providers, whilst customers and service providers may be limited in
their access to the broad developer community,” Harrison added.
OMA is pleased with the growing support of its API
Program from a wide spectrum of industry players. The list includes operators,
equipment manufacturers, and software vendors from across the globe.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
