I am not an expert on mobile application development yet I am in a position where I may need to select one in the near future in relation to a business/product venture I am involved with. It's a fascinating dilemma. Beyond the technical comparisons there are numerous business risk considerations. Let's look at the candidates:
For all I know there could be more I don't know about, though these appear to be the main contenders. There are a couple of others I deliberately excluded (e.g. Palm) for my unique purposes.
One thing I look for is market reach, which is determined in part by current penetration levels. In the smartphone space the biggest player is Symbian, with Windows far behind in second place. Then there's Blackberry and iPhone. Android and LiMo are not there, today. Unfortunately (as in the world of investment funds), past performance is not an indication of future returns. In other words, current penetration levels mean little to those looking to the future. For example, Windows may be stagnant, unable to build on its success to date, due to Microsoft's tendency to scare off partners and its reluctance to be truly open and sharing. Symbian is an ancient OS that could very easily fail to be limber enough, technically, to enable effective, speedy and innovative new applications. Apple is a formidable force, though its predilection, like Microsoft, to fence in its partners is problematic, yet their proven ability to at times succeed at world domination makes them very interesting. Google, for all its technological prowess, is stumbling with Android and they seem to only half understand the business side of the mobile space. I worry sometimes that the carrier traction they have achieved to date may only be a tactic on the part of the carriers to scare Apple and the other players to cut better deals with them. Blackberry's strength is mostly business users which may constrain their ultimate success, though they can still win big in that one key segment. LiMo I know nothing about, nor what it means if they tie up with LiPS.
For my purposes this is not a great start, but I have to start somewhere. While it's a largely subjective view of things, it is where we all start. A little more research, including talking to more people with the knowledge of the space, will help to make a selection. From what I know to date, here is how I am analyzing matters for new applications that requires tight telephony integration, targets both consumer and business users, and will allow easy access (via carriers if need be) to the greatest number of potential customers. Certainly there are many contrary opinions out there, which you can sample in the comments to the above-linked TechCrunch article.
Symbian, on the technical side, looks like an integration monster where the objective is seamless operation with the embedded telephony application. This would appear to be exacerbated if you want to do data transfers at the same time. Part of this latter problem, however, is due to CDMA and therefore is not purely a Symbian issue. It is possible that its move to open source will over time encourage OS improvements I am not convinced that those who would undertake that work would not rather focus on a newer OS like Android that does not have legacy problems. Despite its high penetration level I am uncomfortable with Symbian.
Windows, for the reasons I stated earlier, is not an option at this time. I simply don't believe that Microsoft will succeed in broadening the attractiveness of Windows Mobile.
Android looks very interesting. The platform, on an initial inspection, looks clean and extensible. It appears to play well with telephony application integration and concurrent data connectivity. I can see prototyping on it, even without a phone(!), and if things don't work out the code may be reasonably transportable to another platform. If Google stumbles further, which is unfortunately very possible, they could lose this horse race to a resurgent Symbian or Windows.
iPhone applications will look pretty, easier, though like with Windows I am not confident that they will play well with developer partners. There is also the matter of whether the platform will stall as a niche product or extend to a broader appeal. Apple is not at all likely to be willing to consider their OS on appliances other than Apple's own.
Blackberry, for reasons already stated, doesn't appeal to me. I will continue to watch them to see if I need to reconsider. LiMo appears to have little to recommend it as a Linux-based mobile platform in comparison to Android.
My conclusion: choose Android for at least the prototyping stage. If it fails to be a good ultimate choice it should be straight-forward to switch horses before going to market. While it'll be late that is not a problem for my time frame, which is 2009. Their openness is attractive and easy to work with. Even if they do fail I expect they will, by fear or technology influence, cause others to improve their platforms and business practices.
If I'm wrong, that's ok. Business isn't about making good, long-term predictions, but positioning the company to be flexible as the environment changes. That looks to be most possible with this choice.
If you find my analysis here to be amateurish and superficial, you would be somewhat correct. I am not embarrassed by this. We all start in a new space in ignorance and seek to improve. Having objectives in hand at the start helps to navigate even poorly-understood options.
Friday, July 4, 2008
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