It's a Client thing, So Put it on the Client!

For the last three years, I've watched a trend moving mobile location away from network controls and Web services and into client controls with device APIs, rendering servers useless in transactions and eliminating network smarts and infrastructure from the mix.  Following a conversation with Tom Cooper of Openwave this morning, I have to admit that perhaps I was too quick to lose confidence in the value that server vendor experience lends to the conversation. According to Tom, SUPL is going quite well (surprise, surprise), and there's a new anti-Nokia-approach trend emerging which would imbed triple A server-smarts and functions into clients, thereby allowing the network to retain a governing role. It's not a server approach, it's a client approach, but it takes lessons learned from location-in-a-server-scenario and moves that down the client. Bravo. This is not only an acknowledgment of the trend, but also a refreshing indicator of an old-guard willingness to conform, rather than resisting to preserve an antiquated approach no longer economically reasonable for the ecosystem.