Three months after holding its first Open Development Initiative conference in New York City, Verizon Wireless last week hosted a conference call to update developers on the effort, announcing a device has now passed the operator's ODI certification process. "We can't mention the company name because of [a non-disclosure agreement], but we want you to know the process works," said Verizon vice president for open development Anthony Lewis during Friday's call. Lewis added the ODI-certified device was already in the pipeline when Verizon first made public its open access plans a few months back.
For the most part, the conference call focused on device development, prompting members of the audience to ask when Verizon would divulge details of the ODI application certification process. According to Lewis, devices are "the crux of the project--once we can ignite an ecosystem of devices, we feel applications will quickly follow." To that end, he said Verizon will not launch an apps certification effort, instead relying on OEMs to determine whether or not certification is necessary for apps written for their devices. "We'll allow any applications to run on certified devices," Lewis said, adding developers may create applications for any operating system they choose, including Google Android, the Linux-based LiMo Platform or Windows Mobile.
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