During development the developer tests the device application by deploying it to Unwired Platform Runtime. In a production environment, device applications are provisioned using Afaria or similar third-party product.
In the development test environment, device application binaries and their dependencies are provisioned to emulators or actual devices. Deployment to devices can be achieved by physically connecting the device to the developer's machine, and copying binaries using device-supported tools.
Device applications should also be tested in a test environment that emulates the production environment for complete end-to-end testing.
For production scale deployment, application deployment is managed using proven products such as Afaria. Afaria offers enterprise-class device application deployment and management features.