JSR 248 Mobile Service Architecture can be seen as an evolutionary step from JSR 185
Java Technology for the Wireless Industry, further stretching the lowest common functionality denominator for mobile phones, with the intention to firm up the core feature set of mobile
phones, and not the least making mobile application development a bit more predictable.
JTWI requires:
MSA adds a number of important features on top of that:
MSA Subset:
Additionally in fully featured MSA:
Note the distinction between MSA and MSA Subset, as there's expected to be phones that won't support the full MSA feature set. I'd argue that 3D Graphics is a big leap in itself, much more so than
Location and Web Services, but the specifiers might have realized that games contribute to almost all mobile phone application revenue.
Already MSA Subset is a big leap from JTWI, but as mobile phone technology evolves very fast , it's critical to push the envelope. Many phones already have at least what's in MSA Subset.