Ewan at AAS has added his commentary on Nokia's Preminet announcement....
I'll add a few comments of my own.
Developers are driven to BREW not because it's a cool platform to develop upon (it's not) nor because it's an easy platform to develop upon (it's not) - but because the economic model works.
For the most part, Qualcomm sets the revenue share for the operators, as well as all the billing and settlement, and make it very easy for subscribers to get, use, and pay for applications. The pay for part is key - as most applications have monthly subscription fees. So instead of an X x Y model, it's an X x Y x Z revenue model which looks a helluva lot better in any business plan. The result is once you get over the barriers to entry, BREW has been very lucrative for the successful developers. Much more so than handango, which can basically adjust their percentage however *they* need to make money.
Secondly, they will be using the Java Certified and Symbian Signed QA qualifications to get applciations listed - which is a giant pain in the ass and expense for developers - but better for operators (lowers customer support costs) and subscribers (they generally get applications that don't have bugs or memory leaks) which of course helps operators (lowers customer support costs).
If Nokia is smart, they will work hard to make this as cheap as possible for the small independent developer who doesn't mind the aforementioned pain in the ass. There's no reason to bilk developers for unnecessary electoronic signatures (Verisign).
Acutally RIM requires a signature but their fee is $100. This is much more reasonable than $400 for an independent developer.
Finally, i certainly hope Nokia has the foresight to not allow operators that choose Preminet to lock their devices from shareware and installing applications from other sources such as handango. This would be a crying shame.
If you own a device, you should be able to choose what install you run on it. period.
