Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Developer Concerns (Was RE: Problems Nextel's Dev Program)

From: NEXTEL-1
Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2004 11:41:22 -0400

-------- Original Message --------
From: "Rincon, Juan Felipe" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Developer Concerns (Was RE: Problems Nextel's Dev Program)

Hello all,

I would like to take some time to address the concerns some of you have
raised on this list regarding how we at Nextel work with developers.

1 - Possible redistribution of copyrighted content: It is not Nextel's
business practice to infringe on anyone's copyrights or to illegally
distribute anyone's content. We will work with Mike B to determine what
has
been happening with regards to unauthorized distribution of application
and
take appropriate action. Rest assured that the behavior Mike describes
is
not something we either approve of or condone.

In conjunction with Motorola, we've spent a lot of effort and time that
our
developers' intellectual property is both clearly established and
protected
both legally and from a systems perspective. In fact, the restrictions
on
actually installing applications on phones (e.g. WebJAL access,
distribution only through iDEN Update) are designed to make it more
difficult for someone to illegally redistribute someone else's
intellectual
property on a grand scale.

2 - Need for more information on upcoming phones and handsets: Much of
why
we stay tight-lipped about future phones is driven by pure business
need:
it's been shown that when news of a new/better/faster/sleeker upcoming
phone leaks broadly to the general public it may significantly affect
sales
of existing high-end handsets. This is also driven by our process for
actually launching new phones: while features and functionality are
established early in the process, features do change during development,
even as a result of Alpha and Beta testing.

It is true that as a matter of process and business we share more
information about future handsets with partners who have signed a non-
disclosure agreement with us than with the broader developer community
or
with the general public. However, this is usually in the order of 2-4
months before launch of a new phone. We've worked to expand the schedule
on
which the broad developer community can have access to the Beta
Developers'
guide for a new phone, and with the i830, the Beta Developers' Guide was
available to registered developers on our program almost two months in
advance of its actual launch. This is not much more time than what
preload
developers have to figure out what's in a new phone (4-5 months before
launch).

While we recognize that not knowing what is coming makes it difficult to
have the Next Great Application launched immediately when a new phone is
available, we have to balance that out with the effect it can have on
our
broader business and with the fact that phones and plans for phones
change
during development. We have to make sure we don't give developers
incomplete or inaccurate information. You may be able to get a sense of
that by comparing what folks post on forums such as HoFo regarding what
they've heard regarding future handset features with what actually
launches-
-the leaked information is rarely on target.

3 - Undocumented problems/errors on older phones: when either Nextel or
Motorola learn of an error on a handset and have enough information with
which to reproduce it, we include it into a list of fixes to be included
in
future firmware. There's a reason why we are at firmware release .06 on
the
i730, which was launched last November--we've been listening and fixing
things that we hear of as problems.

For example, we know there have been a number of postings on this SDK
list
regarding network performance, for example, and through collating those
and
comparing them with input from some of Nextle's partners Motorola
engineers
were able to identify some of the causes of this as rooted within
firmware.
That fix will be included in the next firmware release for the i730.

If you do know of problems with phone software that has been around for
a
while and that you believe need fixing, please let us know what they are
and how we can reproduce them--sample code is usually the best way to
get
there. Once we know of it, we share it between Nextel and Motorola and
plan
a path for fixing it and communicating the fix.

4- Partnership programs: establishing a partnership requires a fair
amount
of both legal and business support. As the number of partners we've
signed
has grown, our partner programs have also expanded. Two years ago, the
only
type of partnership you could sign with Nextel was to become a Certified
Developer. As that program grew, we knew we could not continue to offer
the
level of support to each partner that was required, and we established
the
Industry Solutions Partner, Application Partner, and Publisher Partner
programs, through which we were able to increase the number of
developers
that we brought in under the Nextel umbrella. We're expanding our
programs
now to also include infrastructure software providers (e.g. middleware)
and
services such as consultancies and custom development. However, these
things take time to do properly. We realize this may be frustrating when
you're working under tight development schedules in what is a very
competitive marketplace.

5 - Limited release options/perceived focus on horizontal market/lack of
vertical focus: on this, I do think we have a strength. If there's
anything
we most definitively are, it is vertically focused -- take a look at
http://www.nextel.com/about/enterprise/wbs/index.shtml?
id4==learn_link3;industry_sol . Our distribution tools fall in two
categories:
 - under the broad umbrella of reaching everyone (i.e. iDen Update,
and now Cellmania--we'll be posting the formal announcement soon)
 - targeted, enterprise-focused distribution tools such as Mobile
Application Manager (MAM) and Partner Mobile Application Manager (PMAM).
Just about everyone who has TotalConnect service has MAM.
(http://www.nextel.com/mam/). If you're building an industry-specific
application, you can sell directly to your customers and install the
application on their phones using MAM. You do not need to have a
partnership with Nextel to do this. In fact, this is the perfect
distribution model for someone building custom tools on contracts for
which
building a partnership with Nextel would be overkill.

6 - Customer Relationship tools: I do think this is another one of our
strengths. My Nextel, available through Nextel.com, is pretty close to
what
Zac describes as what he needs for his customers. An account admin (i.e.
anyone who is the person responsible for an account) can add/modify
services through the site. If there are services you need to enable that
are not available on My Nextel, please let us know and we'll work with
our
web teams to see how we can have those added.

We do listen, and we do take efforts to respond.

If you do have concerns, comments, or problems, please give us at
Nextel's
Developer Program and Motorola's developer program a chance to respond.
Please feel free to contact us:
 Nextel: via email [email-masked] ; via web:
http://developer.nextel.com/ click on "Ask for help")
 Motorola: http://idenphonescontactus.custhelp.com/cgi-
bin/idenphonescontactus.cfg/php/enduser/std_alp.php

Yours

Juan Felipe Rincón
Manager, Developer Program,
Nextel Communications
http://developer.nextel.com

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From: NEXTEL-1
Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2004 19:21:32 -0400

-------- Original Message --------
From: Zac Bowling <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Developer Concerns (Was RE: Problems Nextel's Dev Program)

    My first email might of sounded a little emotional and for that I'm
sorry. I do however see some problems with the developer program.
Understand that even though I see some problems that tend to frustrate
and sometimes anger me, I am more then greatful for the program. I had
voiced my frustrations in that past through the
[email-masked] email but it took weeks to get a response
back and the response was rarely relating to my questions and sometimes
seemed like a canned response copied from the FAQ. When I would reply to
try and give a better explanation of my problems (thinking this maybe
the case), I would sometimes never receive a response or would get a
similar canned response back.
    When I wrote the first email, I was angry because I've been working
on development projects based in J2ME for the past year and a half and
about 80% of that is for Nextel products. Its disappointing when I spend
so much time designing products that will help Nextel (as well as my
own) profit margins, that I have to deal with this type of service. I
don't say that out of anger or rage, but frustration of dealing with
with this for so long.
    I'm a big supporter of the open source movement and I actively
support over 9 different major projects on that front, helping design
products for embedded Linux  systems. I'm used to the community that
comes from working in open source projects. People to people
relationships. Knowing the developers of the code I'm calling and
getting to work with them (since we are programmers too). I am used to
that type of environment. You know you can get things done with the code
you rely upon when you can get communication with people in charge. This
is very important to me as it is to many other developers.
    Sometimes working with Nextel though, I feel like when I have a
problem, I'm not even getting herd. I feel like I'm just hear to ride
along with the Nextel developer experience and if I get anything done
while Nextel be willing, then so much the better. I hate the insecurity
it gives me. It would be wonderful if I could have a phone number, or
maybe even an email of an single individual, where their email is read
by only that one person that I could establish a relationship with that
one person who would know me and quickly be able to answer my questions.
    I'm the project lead for my company. I've been designing IT products
for several years now. Some of those have been horizontal market based
products. When you are the lead of a horizontal based product, you are
not a programmer anymore. You end up designing much more of the company
because you have so much to more to worry about such as deployment,
billing, sales, marketing, and making your product compatible with many
different situations instead of just a single customers needs. One of
the big things is keeping your customer happy, building a relationship,
and making sure their problems are solved in a timely manner. The same
is true for anyone in a project designing a vertical application for a
single customer as well. Now in this market, we are designing a product
based on Nextel system. Our product depends on Nextel to make it
function is someway. When marketing and deploying our product, we do a
lot in the way of actually selling the phones and devices ourselves. We
in essence become the Nextel representive, because without our product
on the phones, they might as well choose T-Mobile or AT&T, basic two-way
radio, or maybe even nothing at all.
    This is the whole reason we became partners with a another dealer.
We get the tools and we get to help our own customers and it also helps
us sell the phones ourself, and in turn we give them a commission or a
disconnected rate on our product and use our marketing material to sell
the phones themselves. In the larger companies, our product becomes the
selling point sometimes, because a lot of companies see it as that they
can always get a cell phone from anyone, but they need Nextel for this
one feature.
    Because of this mind set, our customers depend on us, not Nextel or
dealer/account representatives to get them setup and to take care of
them. They sometimes don't have the time or the resources to deal with
Nextel for the phones and setting up their data plan and helping them
with their problems and then have to turn around to us for a product
problem. They don't see it that way. With our products, we sale nearly
80% of the phones that carry our products (and that figure might explain
why people by phones on ebay just because they have a game or ring tone
or something already preloaded).
    We are now in a position to help our customers with their phone
issues, or setting up their accounts and escalating issues for them,
but this doesn't help us with the long wait it takes to help them with
their application issues if we have a problem in our code and we need
help from Nextel.
    You mentioned the "My Nextel" in your email. This is not the same
thing we get at http://indirect.nextel.com/. "My Nextel" is great for
the end customer to check his bill and add some basic options, but not
what we need to manage our customers.
    What we need most as developers is the ability to access our
customers accounts without asking them for access into their My Nextel
space to see if they have data service and set them up. Sort of like the
WAIT tool on the Indirect site. Dealers get so many more tools to handle
customers needs that are just not there to us developers. Maybe
something like the Specialized Care Form and Network
Escalations form would be nice to help our customers so we can make them
happy when they call us directly? The account look up tool is something
I needed for months during the early roll out stages before we partnered
with a dealer. I know that developers are not dealers and some of these
tools should be shielded from abuse by developers (since its much easier
to get access to the developer site then it is the Indirect site), but I
don't think that many developers would mind signing an agreement and a
non-disclosure form to get access to these tools.
    I would also like to know who I can contact to become one of the
people who gets to know about these upcoming phones. I will sign
anything needed as long as it gives me the ability to compete with
larger companies and I would love to know I can be included on the
Industries page of the Indirect site to get our companies marketing
marital and products included with others that are targeting the
horizontal market such as @Road, Xora, ActSoft, CometTracker, eTrace,
and GearWorks so that other dealers can know of our products too. I
would also like to know to be included in the incentive program that you
give the dealers for selling these types of products. I would like my
product to be on the list of products that will give commissions on
sales of our product. Dealers sell the products they get on that list,
and it would be nice to know how to be included in that. I know that our
product will have to be approved by Nextel before any of that, but I
seem to have hit a brick wall try to get any further on this. As you can
tell, I'm a very persistent person, and I've done everything from
calling just about every data representative in town, to calling as many
people as I can find a direct line to, to trying to find some sort of
clue to someone that can point me to the right person to talk too. I've
submitted my application to the partner program 3 times, and after
waiting 2 months each time, haven't even gotten past the first step.
This is what I find unfair about the program the most. You limit growth
and the potential benefit of a better product from reaching the top
(like mine... *shameless plug*).
    Now on the end of deployment, it still requires access to the
persons account user name and password for the "My Nextel" page for NAM
access. NAM access isn't the best solution because it confuses my end
customers, but I'm willing to live with that. :-) I would be nice to be
able to have an admin area were a customer could grant access to a third
party and that third party be able to access multiple accounts at once
and the NAM would be migrated across for all of them.
    I also don't like how the location server was never opened and the
feature to use the GPS with a WAP push was never finished. I emailed you
before about this but you said it was stilling be 'investigated' and
would be coming, but you have been saying that for 3 years. I would love
to be able to write application that can track the phones enabled for
GPS that don't support GPS for Java.

See:
http://developer.nextel.com/portal/generic.jsp?beanID=60&viewID=viewMessage&message=17&thread=9&parent=-1&forum=7
and
http://developer.nextel.com/portal/generic.jsp?beanID=60&viewID=viewMessage&message=1686&thread=584&parent=1630&forum=7
and
http://developer.nextel.com/portal/generic.jsp?beanID=60&viewID=viewMessage&message=2446&thread=829&forum=7&parent=-1

    I also understand the marketing aspect of why the phone models are
hidden the way they are, but something as basic as like with the latest
i710 release you could of given us some heads up. You could tell us
something as basic as "It closly matches the i730 except for the outside
screen display has been removed." and it would help us. I wrote my
application to use the outside screen and its nice to know that any
customers that run on the i710 won't get that feature. We don't even
need a picture. Just a road map. Maybe as something as basic as "4th
Quater 2004- Nextel plans on releasing camera phone with larger screen
and bluethooth capablity. Developer extentions currenlty in production
and may be released in 3rd Quarter 2004. Price range for the phone will
be around $900 MSRP" posted on the Nextel site would be nice for
example. Thats all I would need. That tells me what to expect, what to
plan for, if it targets my current customers, and if I should hold out
release of my product for another phones release date. We have to make
the same decisions about releasing our products as you do and
communication between is key for us to make any type of head way. I
would like to know now, how you can gain access to the outside screen
(which looks similar to the full color screen of the screen for i730)
and the inside screen at the same time time. Even if its still basic, an
veague and abstract idea so we programmers can figure out how we may be
able to extend our applications later to do such things as displaying
something internaly and externaly at the same time. Even the demensions
of the interal screen, so that when I pass back my image objects for my
software's mapping system (that pulls full color maps off my server),
how big they need to be. Thats all I really ask for. That is why I have
to go to see the leeked information.
        This is why I'm frustrated. I think that you guys have done a
great job
compaired to a lot of other companies, but that doesn't make it any less
frustrating. As well as design productivity applications, I design games
in my spare time for J2ME devices so you can see I spend a lot of my day
working on this stuff. It's how I make money and its also my hobbie. I
just want it to get better.
        Hope you will understand where I am coming from and it will help
motivate the direction that Nextel might take in the comming quaters
when the new camera phones hit the market with the i860 and i930.

Zac B.
[email-masked]

 
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