Plug-in model

A method for use in a mobile terminal, comprising:

• providing a mobile terminal having a mobile terminal platform comprised of a processor and a computer readable medium supporting a mobile terminal platform domain, the mobile terminal platform domain supported by a software services component for providing platform functionality, in the form of open platform API (OPA) services, said software services component in the form of software instructions adapted to be loaded and stored in the computer readable medium and executed by the processor in the mobile terminal;
• providing an interface component in said mobile terminal platform domain having at least one interface for providing access to the platform functionality of the software services component for enabling an application domain software to be installed, loaded and run in said mobile terminal platform via said at least one interface, said interface component in the form of software instructions adapted to be loaded and stored in a computer readable medium and executed by the processor of the mobile terminal;
• providing plug-in software in the form of software instructions adapted to be loaded and stored in the computer readable medium and executed by the processor of the mobile terminal and together with the application software for extending the platform functionality of the software services component of the mobile terminal platform domain via the at least one interface, wherein said at least one interface comprises an application programming interface, and wherein said plug-in software adheres to the same paradigm as the platform functionality by supporting application software mechanisms supported by the mobile terminal platform;
• complying with an application model defined in the mobile terminal platform;
• and is implemented as a component wherein it provides its services to the application domain software through a defined function or method based interface, the services including one or more of component model compliance, naming convention compliance, exception handling compliance and message model compliance.