The JSR 281 IMS Services API

At this years JavaOne Conference a MIDlet was introduced that uses the new IP Multimedia Subsystem API (IMS). The goal of this API is to offer a standardized IP network infrastructure on which higher level services like voice and multimedia communication can be built. Operators that use this API can develop new mobile IP based services at lower costs. Users on the other hand can advantage of mobile P2P multimedia real-time communications. Possible promising fields of application are:

• instant picture sharing
• mobile-to-mobile video streaming
• networked-gaming
• enriched location based services
  

In general the JSR 281 is an API that allows MIDlets to be clients to IMS application servers and to realize mobile P2P services on the mobile device. The classes of this API offer functions to create session based IMS calls, to communicate with IMS application servers and to search for capablities of remote peers. The demonstrated IMS MIDlet showed how to use this API by presenting a MIDlet to exchange text and photos via the underlying SIP protocol. Because the final release of JSR 281 is scheduled for Q4 2007 we can anticipate new devices supporting this API in 2008.