During AT&T’s recent announcements at CES regarding this year’s smartphone lineup expansion, something caught our eye via this press release.  Ma Bell will be using Qualcomm’s revamped BREW mobile platform (Brew^® MP) as the standard application platform for “Quick Messaging Devices.” IntoMobile recently confirmed thatQualcomm’s updated mobile platform  “will be available in the U.S. and key international markets by the late summer of 2010.”

BREW, short for “Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless” was originally developed by Qualcomm for CDMA carriers, like Verizon and Sprint in the U.S.  The platform has since branched out to support GSM network carriers; but hasn’t had too much recent traction with developers, who have flocked to code their applications for the iPhone OS, Android, BlackBerry Java ME, Windows Phone, and webOS.  While this announcement won’t impact smartphones, it is big news for AT&T’s future device portfolio.

The takeaway here is that the carrier will be able to launch their own AT&T branded mobile applications and features on a wide variety of phones that don’t require a data connection.  One can’t help but wonder if this strategy was ultimately set up to not only give “low end” devices additional features, but to help alleviate some of the network bandwidth woes AT&T has had with their smartphones — namely, the iPhone’s impact on their wireless network.

The press release and developer SDK information follows.

‘Apps for All’ by Standardizing Apps Development with Brew Mobile Platform
De la Vega also announced a significant new agreement with Qualcomm to standardize apps development by adopting BREW Mobile Platform. With this agreement, AT&T intends to make BREW Mobile Platform its primary operating system platform for Quick Messaging Devices, one of the company’s fastest growing categories of devices.

AT&T customers with these devices historically haven’t had the same convenient access as AT&T smartphone customers to thousands of compelling, new applications. Since AT&T launched its pioneering line-up of Quick Messaging Devices in fall 2008, about 30 percent of the company’s postpaid customers who are new or upgrading have purchased this type of device. AT&T is committed to spurring innovation and apps development for the millions of customers in this category.

Quick Messaging Devices are integrated devices that are value priced and texting centric; they have full QWERTY keyboards, either physical or virtual, and, since this past fall, full Web browsing capabilities. Customers with these devices are more likely to demand apps, subscribe to messaging and data plans, and are a large potential market for application developers, according to AT&T research.

AT&T Chief Marketing Officer David Christopher announced plans to begin rolling out Quick Messaging Devices with BREW Mobile Platform in the second half of the year, so that by year end 2011, about 90 percent of AT&T’s devices in this segment are planned to be based on BREW Mobile Platform. AT&T announced that Samsung will be its first device maker to launch a Quick Messaging Device featuring BREW Mobile Platform. HTC, LG and Pantech also are building devices featuring BREW Mobile Platform for planned availability in late 2010 or early 2011.

“Today, developers must essentially rebuild apps for different handsets and operating systems, increasing their costs, slowing the pace of innovation and stalling the delivery of mobile apps to customers,” Christopher said. “We want to tear down the barriers and make it much easier for developers to reach our customers – and for our customers to access apps. Moving to one platform for this fast growing segment of devices will help developers reach millions more customers who want easy access to the hottest mobile apps.”

To help developers jumpstart apps development for AT&T’s BREW Mobile Platform devices, Christopher announced a new AT&T SDK which features support for BREW Mobile Platform, continued support for Java and widgets, and includes tools to help developers tap into AT&T network capabilities as they design and code their applications. The new AT&T SDK is available starting today at sdk.developer.att.com.

So there you have it.  Just when you thought that the mobile platform couldn’t get any more fragmented, you have a brand new iteration of BREW set up to expand apps and features to non-smartphone devices.

[IntoMobile, AT&T]