The Continuation of a Fragmented Mobile Market

The mobile world continues to evolve. In fact, the definition of what is mobile continues to change as well. The addition of netbooks and iPads as well as the expected future evolution of ebooks is making mobile mean a lot more than just phones. If you do focus on just phones, it is interesting to see that evolution is occurring as well -- especially for developers.

In talking with a person on my team that covered mobile development several years ago, the conversations invariably centered on the fragmentation in the mobile market as far as phones, tools, providers, and more. There was no standard way for a developer to create a single application that targeted all of the various systems.

Most of the time, the development platform and tools were determined by which service provider's phones you were going to target. If you were targeting Nokia phones, you were likely to be programming to Symbian and using one of the Nokia platforms such as System 60. Qualcomm had BREW as a development platform that was among the most popular. There was Objective-C type development for Apple phones. You could use C# and such for Windows Mobile devices. Some phones would let focus on technologies like J2ME. Overall, there was no single solution, and most of the solutions required special libraries and lower level languages.

Michelle Megna, Site Manager of EnterpriseMobileToday commented today that "the mobile enterprise right now, and likely for next 2 years, is extremely fragmented, industry jargon for: everyone in the workplace is using different phones/devices running different operating systems." Ironically, it is now several years later. Most phones are still locked to specific providers, and most still require specific tools and technologies to program to them.

The fragmentation has not really changed in that regard.

Unfortunately, that means developers might have to learn multiple tools and re-write their applications if they want to target multiple. There is no easy solution to hitting all platforms. It seems that most developers are simply selecting the platforms with the greatest opportunities and hitting them the hardest. It will be interesting to how this plays out. Early results show that the popularity of the iPhone has benefited well in getting applications. With the Android phones now outselling iPhones, it will be interesting to see if the number of applications getting developed follow suit.

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Thoughts on: http://www.openscreenproject.org/ ?

Pfft! It's no different than the desktop fragmentation... just on a more massive scale. Desktop development still depends on the hardware and OS - do I use Windows? OSx? Linux? It seems more pervasive because there are more players (manufactures) and OS combinations - what we're seeing is a Cartesian join between the two. And it doesn't help that there is a fragmentation in cell phone technology as well. GRPS vs HDMA (or what ever they are called... that bit that prevents me from taking my AT&T phone to Sprint).

-tg

Well you can expect Microsoft to exit the space within the next 2 years. Their "me too gewgaw" Phone 7 will be the death of Microsoft in the mobile market. After a few suckers buy into its glitz the first year and corporate users are forced to go to Blackberry for a non-toy phone I expect their market share to quickly dwindle to nothingness.

Fortunately WinMo 6.x will be available for the short term, but the platform will be left to stagnate much as native VB was when Microsoft got on the Java-clone train.


I feel that Gates needs to come back to work, roll up his sleeves, and throw the rascals out.

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Originally Posted by techgnome

Pfft! It's no different than the desktop fragmentation... just on a more massive scale. Desktop development still depends on the hardware and OS - do I use Windows? OSx? Linux?

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I don't totally agree with this. Using something like Java, I get a little bit more portability across operating systems and hardware. The same is actually becoming true with .NET. A .NET program can run on Windows Machines, and using Mono it can run on Linux and several other platforms. .NET is also extending to other devices as well.

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Originally Posted by dilettante

Well you can expect Microsoft to exit the space within the next 2 years. Their "me too gewgaw" Phone 7 will be the death of Microsoft in the mobile market....

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I agree that the WP7 will have some hurdles to overcome; however, there area few things about it that are nice. Specifically, if connected to a corporate network, you should be able to do collaboration pretty easily. I've seen demos of this that looked slick. Being able to access shared office documents and PowerPoint decks and change them from the phone is a big corporate plus in my book.

Of course, I've only seen demos. We'll see how smooth this and the XBox Live stuff is. If it isn't smooth, then the phone stands a much smaller chance of success. It is a tough battle, but history has shown that Microsoft often comes out weak, yet wins in the end.....

Brad!

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Originally Posted by FireXtol

Thoughts on: http://www.openscreenproject.org/ ?

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I didn't see Apple or Microsoft in the list of companies on this.... Did I miss them, or are they not participating? Apple has already kicked dirt at Flash, so there is already dints in the ability for this to fully succeed.....

Brad!

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Originally Posted by brad jones

I agree that the WP7 will have some hurdles to overcome; however, there area few things about it that are nice. Specifically, if connected to a corporate network, you should be able to do collaboration pretty easily. I've seen demos of this that looked slick. Being able to access shared office documents and PowerPoint decks and change them from the phone is a big corporate plus in my book.

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But nothing really prevented Microsoft from providing this on the existing WinMo 6.x platform, a platform that is less "toy-like" and iPhone-me-too than the relatively business-hostile Phone 7 platform.

The developer story on Phone 7 is another nail in the coffin. There are two ways you can view Phone 7 as a developer: either a closed platform you can't do anything on or a sandboxed "nursery" designed for running trivial games (a la Flash). Microsoft seems utterly unaware that people develop line of business software in Windows Mobile just as they do on the desktop.

No, this is simple greed. Microsoft wants a bigger play in the mass consumer space iPhone found success with: 14 to 35 year old females.

Nobody would even care except that the market realities prevent anyone besides a giant in the field with deep pockets from entering and competing. What we need are some massive antitrust actions against Microsoft, Apple, and Google and the phone carriers.

With three (actually more if you add Nokia, Qualcomm, and others) big players, it is less likely the government is going to step in....


I agree that WP7 seems like a step away from business interests. This (in my opinion) is a direct result of what the iPhone and Android phones have done. There is a simple recognition that has occurred:

• people get phones at work that they bring home. These tend to do email and are often used for business applications.
• people get phones for home that they use. They bring these into work.

The reality is that people don't need both, nor do they want two phones. What has seemed to happen is that people prefer the phone they get for home over the phone they get for work. They'd rather extend the home phone to work stuff. I'm guilty of that too. I have a Droid that I use over the Blackberry my office is willing to supply.

And when it comes to applications and developers -- while you can argue that the 'home phones' are not as corporate application friendly, it is hard to argue against them being app friendly. THe iPhone is definitely a consumer device. With the number of applications that have been created for it, you have to admit that *a lot* of developers are targeting it. While the WP7 might be less (a lot less) corporate friendly, I believe there is the belief that in the long run, it will be more app friendly -- consumer apps.

So while corporate developers will be put out a little bit, more developers are likely to have a platform to target.

As to greed. Microsoft is not a charity. They are a business. Worse, they are a public business. As a public business, they are suppose to be trying to make the most money for their shareholders as possible. They do have the deep pockets to take over the phone market -- just like they did with the office productivity tools, like they are doing in the database market, like they are doing in the gaming market, like they do in almost any market they want to own because of revenue potential. You can't blame them for doing what businesses do. (okay, you can, but you can't be surprised by it ;) )

Brad!
These are my own opinions and are subject to change before I hit the Post button.... :)