Patent ID: 8510730

Claim:
A method of managing applications of a plurality of home network devices (HNDs), the method comprising: obtaining, by a mobile hand-held device (MHD), application information through middleware, which can support the plurality of HNDs, from one or more HNDs supporting the middleware among the plurality of HNDs, wherein the application information is information for an application installed in the one or more HNDs; displaying a user interface at the MHD to manage the applications in the plurality of HNDs based on the obtained application information whereby a user changes an application life cycle status of each of the one or more HNDs using the user interface of the MHD, wherein the application life cycle status can be one of install, uninstall and update; determining applications of the plurality of HNDs that are required to be updated by the MHD; if an update request is input by a user through the user interface of the MHD, downloading updated applications from an application server and updating applications of corresponding HNDs; transmitting an application life cycle status change control request to the one or more HNDs supporting the middleware to perform application life cycle status management using the user interface of the MHD; determining, in response to transmitting the application life cycle status change control request, whether an application life cycle status change has been completed in the one or more HNDs supporting the middleware; and if the application life cycle status change has been completed, reconstructing the user interface of the MHD.