The Mobile Communication Platform (MCP) provides a market-proven Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), Short Message Service (SMS) and Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS) for handset manufacturers. The MCP is built using QUALCOMM’s BREW solution and provides a fully-integrated unified Inbox for storing various message types. The MCP is an operator-tested and compliant solution that provides the flexibility to rapidly adapt to meet ever changing operator requirements. Most importantly, the MCP enables handset manufacturers to quickly build a single handset software platform that can support multiple handset models in their product portfolio.

Unlike messaging solutions from other providers, the MCP from Rocket Mobile is a complete solution. A lot of other vendors simply provide the messaging stack and leave it to the handset manufacturer to implement the user interface and services required by wireless operators. In most cases the user interface requires a fair amount of engineering resources and is a complex task. Additionally, the frequent specification updates from the wireless operator impacts the user interface and seldom requires much change to the stack. With the MCP, handset manufacturers are guaranteed to receive a complete end-to-end solution.

Multimedia Message Service (MMS)
Written entirely in BREW, the MMS service of the MCP supports the following:

• An MMS-SMIL compliant viewer, capable of displaying content in major formats supported by QUALCOMM BREW, including JPEG, GIF, PNG, MIDI, QCELP, and MPEG video. The viewer is capable of displaying presentations with multiple slides.
• A robust messaging store, with a unified mailboxes implementation (SMS, EMS, and SMS messages all appear in the same mailboxes to the user).
• The messaging store has provisions to limit use either by the size of a mailbox or the number of messages. When these limits are met, the oldest read message can be automatically deleted to make room for incoming messages.
• Full support for MMS composition, including handing attachments from the camera, gallery, voice notes, and contacts application. Attached media can be stored in memory or on flash prior to attachment.
• Published integration interfaces for other handset applications (such as the contacts application) to control and launch the MCP for message origination and addressing and other purposes including originating messages with attachments.
• Published integration interfaces to other applications (such as the gallery application) to ease porting to new handsets. The MCP uses this porting interface when interacting with outside applications, making it easy to port the MCP to new handset targets with existing or new software.
• vCard support for sending and receiving contact information to and from Microsoft Outlook and other organizational software.
• Support for MMSC options including message priority, message validity period, and server-side deferred delivery of messages.

Short Message Service (SMS) and Enhanced Message Service ( EMS)
The BREW-based SMS and EMS solutions leverage the same core mailbox implementation provided by the MCP, ensuring that key messaging features such as unified mailbox, messaging quotas, and low-memory handling is the same between MMS, EMS, and SMS. In addition, the EMS implementation includes codecs for popular EMS formats including:

• iMelody (encoding and decoding)
• Small and large images (both monochrome and color)
• Animations
• vCard
• Formatted text, including attributes for alignment (left, center, right), font style (normal, bold, underline, italic, strikethrough), and text color (foreground and background)

The MCP includes BREW widgets for EMS display and EMS editing, permitting users to compose rich messages in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get environment. The MCP’s support for EMS also includes support for the message validity period and two levels of priority, as well as the user prompt indicator flag for delivering media content to the handset outside the usual messaging/mailbox paradigm. The solution complies with 3GPP TS 23.040.

The BREW-based SMS solution leverages the QUALCOMM BREW ISMS interfaces to speed porting. The solution complies with TIA/EIA 637A and TIA/EIA 637B. As with EMS, message validity period, two levels of priority, and user prompt indicator flags are supported.

Architecture
The flexibility of the MCP starts with the use of BREW and architecture. Starting with BREW as the development layer the MCP removes MSM chipset dependencies. Furthermore, the individual messaging services within the MCP is architected into separate components. First, this allows handset manufacturers to support a range of mobile stations from low to mid to the high-end tier. For example, if the low-end mobile station does not require MMS services, the handset manufacturer can elect to use the SMS and EMS, or just the SMS component of the MCP. Second, because the user interface and the underlying messaging services such as the transport and message store are separated into different components, a proven messaging stack can be used as the basis for implementing a new user interface for a new software platform to support additional carriers.