Certification? $300!

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

Dear Paul

In the last two years your company has worked with Microsoft to make Windows® Powered mobile platforms an outstanding success.

Because of this commitment we are very pleased to offer you the opportunity to get one of your applications certified "Designed for Smartphone" or "Designed for Pocket PC" FOR $300 - A 50% DISCOUNT ON STANDARD PRICES*.

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THREE REASONS TO GET YOUR PRODUCT CERTIFIED...

1. Once your product has passed the testing process your company can gain competitive advantage by displaying either the 'Designed for Pocket PC' or 'Designed for Smartphone logos in association with your product, web site and all marketing tools - giving it a powerful and easily identifiable differentiator.

2. Achieve incremental revenues by giving your products greater exposure within the Mobile2Market initiative. Mobile2Market is a comprehensive program for the certification and delivery of Windows Powered applications. The Mobile Application Catalogue Service, for certified applications, has been created exclusively for our operator and online retail partners to select your solution and add it to their network / online store. Find out more about Mobile2Market here:

http://www.microsoft.com/mobile/mobile2market

3. Product certification is one of the qualifiers for Certified Partner Program. The benefits available to Certified Partners are similar to those currently enjoyed by Mobile Solutions Partner Program members but in many cases offer you even more advantages. A full list of benefits and associated fees are published here:

http://members.microsoft.com/partner/partn...ng/default.aspx

Product certification is conducted by independent third-party testing labs, at a cost of $600 per application. Take advantage of our specially negotiated 50% discount by signing up for certification before 30th January 2003*.

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YOUR NEXT STEPS...

STEP 1: BUILD

Use the rich software platform, development tools, and resources from Microsoft to build a mobile application designed for Pocket PC or Smartphone. You can get all the resources you need from the Microsoft Mobile Solutions Partner Program. If you have not logged in recently and have forgotten your password, click here:

http://www.microsoft.com/mobile/partners/f...tenPassword.asp

Step 2: CERTIFY

Work with one of our approved software testing vendors to earn the logo. This simple process takes just 5-7 business days. Email us at [email protected] to receive the 50% discount*.

Step 3: MARKET

Once the product certification is complete and you receive the logo, submit your application through an easy on-line wizard into the Mobile Application Catalogue Service; this enables you to develop business terms and product promotion strategies directly with mobile operators and online retail partners for free.

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MOBILE2MARKET IN ACTION!

The Orange SPV Smartphone available in the UK, France, Switzerland and Denmark comes with an Add-On pack in the form of an SD card containing just a few of the exciting applications available for the Orange SPV. All applications have been certified as 'Designed for Smartphone' and have been made available to Orange through Mobile2Market. Your company can also benefit from Mobile2Market…

You can find information about Mobile2Market and product logo testing requirements here:

http://www.microsoft.com/mobile/mobile2market

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Reply to this mail, indicating your readiness to certify and we will ensure you take advantage of the 50% discount.

Thanks and Regards

Microsoft Mobility Team

[email protected]

* Terms and Conditions

1. Discount offer limited to one application per partner.

2. Discount offer applies only to applications tested on or before January 31 2003.

3. Microsoft makes this offer in good faith but it is at the sole discretion of Microsoft and may be refused for any reason whatsoever.

4. Product certification qualifies your company for membership of the Microsoft Certified Partner Program but membership involves additional costs.

[Guest Cent]

Now why - in contradiction to all i have heard so far - does this initiative now suddenly "smell" of Microsoft instead of Orange. So far I was under the impression that it was Orange requiring certification ..... Hmmz :evil:

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

Orange REQUIRE certification, MS just offer it as a Quality Assurance service, and publicity service really (through their mobile2market programme).

The INISTENCE on certificates is 100% an Orange decision.

P

[Guest dom]

I believe that it's both Orange and Microsoft. The difference is that MS puts a root certificate in by default which you can override (so it would be fine for dev within an organisation or for personal use). Orange have overwritten the MS root certificate so that it is not possible for a developer to create their own certificate on the device. I believe that stuff certified by Microsoft will still need a separate Orange certificate to run on the SPV (though, I guess you wouldn't have to pay even more for the privelige of having both an Orange and an MS certificate).

This is just based on my meandering through newsgroups and so on, I've not done any proper research on certificates because I'm being lazy and assuming that if a free/cheap way of developing for the SPV (and being able to test on a real SPV) will be posted on one of the msdn newsgroups or on one of the bulletin boards like this.

The text of the original post implies that you don't actually *need* a certificate on a 'standard' MS device, but that it just gives you a 'Competitive advantage'. In the same way you don't need a certificate (saying Designed for Windows) to build normal desktop Windows apps, but many companies do so that they get the 'Designed for Windows' logo.

[Guest Cent]

I agree with both of you ... what shatters my sense of smell is the exact same cost factor .... $600 or as in this offer halfprice at $300. It also says that Orange uses MS. Does that mean that Orange requires it but makes NO money of it ? If so then why doesnt MS just simply drop the cost down to 0 for certifications for the SPV. That would remedy the situation.

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

The problem is, even going thru the certification process would not let us DEVELOP on the physical device using the SDK, only deploy after completion!

Not a whole lot of use I think...

P

[Guest dom]

The problem is, even going thru the certification process would not let us DEVELOP on the physical device using the SDK, only deploy after completion!  

Not a whole lot of use I think...

P

That part seems to be entirely Orange's "[Fault|Policy]"!

[Guest Cent]

However ... they will be asking for an alternative. What possible alternative would Orange have which still enables Orange to control that any of those applications do not kill the network ?

Viruses are definitly prevented so far ... I think if we were to complain about it it would have to be associated with a viable alternative.

[Guest dom]

However ... they will be asking for an alternative. What possible alternative would Orange have which still enables Orange to control that any of those applications do not kill the network ?

Viruses are definitly prevented so far ... I think if we were to complain about it it would have to be associated with a viable alternative.

I agree that the network must be protected, but how have other networks done this with the XDA and Jornada 928? If there are no problems with those two, why should there be problems with the SPV?

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

Well, not really.

O2 run the XDA with the MS root certificate, no problems.

Vodafone run the Jornada 928 with the MS root certificate, no problems.

O are about to launch the Jornada 928, with, I assume, the MS root certificate.

Ever feel like you're being picked on?

P

[Guest joelj]

Anyone know about the (nasty) Trium Mondo? I know it's PocketPC 2000, but I found it let you run _anything_

...and then died horribly....

...taking all my data with it....

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

The Mondo was awful... I sent mine back!

P

[Guest Rob_Quads]

Not sure this is really viable but is it possible to get hold of a copy of the smartphone OS - i.e. could you install the OS from scratch so that you can then install what you like or is there only 1 version of the OS that will install on the SPV with that being the orange one

[Guest Third_of_Five]

Ever feel like you're being picked on?

Yes, all the time, but that's another story :D

Q. I am still confused, very confused. Will a MS signed application run on an Orange SPV? I thought it couldn't. I thought you needed it signed by Orange (or whoever thay have got to do their signing for them).

BTW, tried to install the dev certificate from the Smartphone SDK on my SPV (based on the following post on a dev forum http://www.smartphonedn.com/forums/viewtop...opic.php?p=978), but it failed with the following:-

Processing files

Emulator files complete

Device files complete

Unable to provision the certificate to the device. You may need to contact the mobile operator servicing your phone

[Guest PolarBear]

It reads to me like this is a test by a MS sponsored third party to be allowed to carry the logo. But its not code signing, so it doesn't allow the app to run on anything.

A bit of terminology problem here.

An X509 certificate is used to SIGN code - it is said to be signed not certified. For those who don't know the completed code is modified to contain a signature which contains the X509 cert, and an encrypted checksum of the code. The cert contains a public key which decodes the checksum, and should match a fresh checksum, which verifies the code has not been changed. The key rule is you trust any old cert, but only a known list.

Hardware or software which has been tested in a lab is usually said to be certified (by the lab, as being compliant), but it is not modified.

IF a third party lab were to test the code (as Paul's message said) then they could not sign with Microsoft's or Orange's cert. That offer looks like "Display the MS logo for $300" :D

[Guest thees]

i downloaded microsoft's ring-tone pack with neat installer and everything, but the phone taunts the inadequacy of my system permissions :| go figure

[Guest martinb]

I believe that the ring tone pack was issued for PocketPC Phone Edition which has no concept of digitally signed applications.

R,

[Guest Soyale]

Guys,

I'm going to TRY to help clear this up if I can. To anyone who met me at the weekend you'll know that I work pretty closely with Microsoft for a development company so I have a good understanding of what's going on. If you have any questions as a result of this post I'll try my best to answer them.

First thing to understand is that there are two seperate "certification" processes we are talking about:

1. Signing of applications for security purposes

2. Quality assurance of applications

Application signing is something that is implemented by a particular carrier and as has been discussed in detail earlier in the thread. It is to do with applying a digital certificate to an application that is matched with a digital certificate on the phone at runtime. Anything which doesn't match is rejected. It is this process that is circumvented by editting the ...prov.xml file and pushing it to the phone while it is booting. It is up to the carrier how and whether they implement this mechanism.

The application signing process costs about $500 but that price is NOT for one application. $500 dollars buys you 100 signing events from Geotrust where a signing event is a single executable, DLL or CAB file. Given that most applications are one executable and a CAB file you can sign 50 applications for your $500.

I'm not privy to Orange's thinking behind the certification of the SPV.

That deals with application signing. The offer that Paul has received is for certification. Certification is the quality assurance program where the application is tested against a set of criterion for installation, UI and behaviour. An application that meets these criterion can bear the Designed for Microsoft Smartphone logo. Generally this logo is shown on websites and application packaging and does not have any affect on the actual application code itself. This testing is done by Microsoft 3rd parties like Veritest.

Hopefully that clears up the difference between signing (to make the application run on a locked phone) and certification (a quality assurance rubber stamp). There's one more thing to cover which is the Mobile2Market program. Mobile2Market is Microsoft's initiative to help bring carriers (like Orange), software developers (like DAT, AIM etc) and consumers (you guys) together. M2M is based around the idea of having an application catalog M2M Catalog of products of a certain quality, hence, the necessity for certification. There is a process for adding (developers), viewing (consumer) and consuming (carrier, 3rd party portal) the M2M content. The Orange site that is pointed to by Paul's mail is backed onto a M2M catalog (I believe).

There are a few different programs and initiatives going on here and they all use similar words so I can see how the messaging isn't 100% clear. I hop I've helped a little! Does what I've written make sense? Does the mail that Paul's received now make sense?

jp