Fidel Vanegas

Smartphone’s “apps” development is a RED Ocean …

May 2, 2010 Computer Programming

Some technicalities to start with;

There are APIs (Application Program Interfaces) for almost any electronic device out there but most of its SDKs (Software Development Kits) allows you to write programs on your computer to interact with their respective electronic device and there is almost a different API for each device even within devices sold by the same company. Now Smart-phones allow intrepid software developers (mostly companies) to create arbitrary “Apps” (Software Applications) that run inside the smart-phone device; what a cool thing!! the question is which one to choose among an open ocean of options and restrictions.

Why is it so attractive to create Smart-phone “apps”?

In my opinion these devices are very appealing due its portability, connectivity, usability and now a days it’s coolness. Needless to say that those little things are used daily by millions of people and they are becoming increasingly addictive among Yuppies (Young Urban Professionals) and not so young one’s too.

Now getting into the subject matter;

Lately I have been struggling trying to decide which smart-phone to get now that my 5 year old LG cellular phone is about to die so you can imagine how conservative I am in regards to sticking to things that just work well. It is difficult to make a decision for many reasons but mostly because new smart-phones have the ability to be programmed (create “Apps”) and as a hard core software engineer anything that can be programmed is something I instinctively try to hack. So instead of looking for a trendy phone showcased on a mall store or kiosk I went ahead and got to review the variety of software development kits to see if I would get some affinity to anyone in particular.  Yes, I am weird.

There are plenty of options to choose and not surprisingly many of them look alike but they are not fully compatible with each other so sticking to one or two technologies would represent plenty of effort just for having fun besides some recent surveys (Ovum’s Cripps) suggest that three platform would be the sweet spot for developers. In regards of platforms; Gizmodo and InfoWorld among other’s reputable gadget sites already consider around five of them such as Apple, Google, RIM, Microsoft and PALM which are the big players in smart-phone category but I would add a couple more to include Nokia and Samsung since they are big players in the mobile industry overall. Let’s make a quick assessment to see which one could be more appealing based on the following characteristics; Native Phone OS, Phone Application Architecture, Supported Programming Languages, Development OS, Development Tools and Deployment Infrastructure.

The list of contenders;

List below is ordered by its 2010 Smart-phone market share based on comScore.com report, Nokia and Samsung at the end due they do not appear in this report:

This is how smart-phone development platforms compare;

This assessment is based on information provided by SDK links in the list above and it should not be considered authoritative since it is only expressing the author’s opinion, interpretation and may be bias by author’s own affinities. Note that I am not currently participating in any of this development programs yet. From information in table below I can conclude that is a good idea to refresh my C/C++ and Java skills if I want to get into the smart-phone development market as well as to be open for embracing a multi-platform development environment to effectively be able to learn and produce smart-phone apps on at least a couple of these development platforms. So far both Apple and Google are more appealing to me.

Yes indeed, the smart-phone development market is a RED ocean but if we could find some BLUE ocean I feel heavily inclined towards the open and free proposal from Android which is the one that is recently ramping up and positioning as a serious contender.

More to think about; commercial printers also have Apps …

Commercial printing industry is also reacting to mobile and cloud computing trend; now relatively inexpensive printer’s are cloud capable where smart-phones can locate and print to these devices while they are connected to the internet cloud. This is not something new for enterprise printing but for commercial printing is a matter of survival since millions of user’s spend more time dealing with their smart-pone than with their personal computers and this is a huge opportunity to drive pages to be printed on paper. Lexmark and HP had launched similar initiatives and even Google is about to launch its “Google Cloud Print” initiative.

Lexmark printer apps and HP’s ePrint Center initiatives and their development approach are very similar to the smart-phone development market but this time the apps are able to control and drive features such as Scan, Store, Fax and Print engaging these printers to the always connected ecosystem on any imaginable way. So these add more complexity to the apps world market while you can create apps that runs on smart-phones which are capable to connect and interact with your apps running on your printer devices to create a whole new experience for people and businesses.