You ever leave a pot of coffee on the counter too long? I have. After several days it starts tasting really funky, and these nasty white organisms start partying on the top of it. (BREW logo from Vayusphere.)

Well, that's what seems to be happening to Qualcomm's BREW development environment, in which Verizon is demanding all applications on its cellular network be written. There's no circulation in a proprietary environment . If the creator doesn't apply regular heat (and risk that nasty, metallic taste) things are going to get funky fast.

They're certainly getting funky for Qualcomm in Korea. Mike Masnick of The Feature writes that carriers there are rejecting BREW en masse in favor of a homegrown alternative called WIPI.

This is bad for Qualcomm, and may prove worse for Korea. With WIPI, application makers have a standard that, while great for Korea, has no export market. Which means their cellular data applications have no export market.

It's also bad for Verizon, which now has just one partner, KDD of Japan, standing between it and a de-facto proprietary cellular data standard. Just another reason why today's smart American developers, and tomorrow's smart American consumers, will prefer a hot Java. (Even the Danger Hiptop, below, supports Java.)