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The term platform is overloaded with meanings in the technology industry and this is particularly the case in mobile telecommunications where it has been used to describe carrier infrastructure, hardware devices, operating systems and most recently, a commercial framework for publishing and selling content.

For some time mobile operators have tried to work out how to provide service delivery platforms (SDP). They have been pushed from one end by the vested interests of their telecoms equipment providers and from the other by falling voice call revenues and the need to build new lines of business around data. While this infrastructure is as critical as other choices as to how networks are plumbed, its functional differences have little direct impact on end subscribers.

Excellent perspective from the UK on where the mobile industry is headed.

Amazon, in opting for the latter, could become the first of many major digital-content sellers to take the route of such Web applications, which use a technology called HTML5 that give browser-based software similar functionality to downloaded software.

The results were the latest sign of trouble for the company, which is watching handsets from rivals like Apple Inc. eat away at its once-dominant share of the smartphone market. RIM hasn’t released a new BlackBerry model for nearly a year as it tries to rejuvenate a product line that’s been criticized as clunky, under-powered and stodgy.

Research In Motion is signaling weakness in the marketplace, with sales of high-end BlackBerry devices falling and delays in releasing a new operating system hurting its share of the mobile business, MarketWatch’s Dan Gallagher tells Laura Mandaro.

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It has seen its share of sales in the benchmark North American market fall to 16.5% at the end of the first quarter of 2011 from 41.3% in the year earlier period, according to research firm Gartner.

Some observers worry RIM is fast following in the path of Finnish handset maker Nokia Corp., which recently issued a steep second-quarter revenue warning, citing market-share loss to rival smartphones, most notably low-end devices powered by Google Inc.’s Android software.