Mobile trends - 2011

It’s been almost 3 years since my Boss came to me and told" Looks like mobile technologies is going to be huge. There is going to be a mass development efforts starting to happen on mobile. Let’s start having a look at it". That's when I started to read up and do some hands on mobile technologies, starting with J2ME and Windows Mobile. iPhone and Android were not the rage that they are now (at least Android was not). That's about the time when I wrote this blog. Now when I revisit that old blog, I'm really surprised at the change that has happened in the Mobile world. Mobile phones have given way to smart phones and they are now giving way for Super phones and Tablets.

While smart phones were about being a good media gadget (a good camera, a nice display with good audio and video capability) with a speedy processor along with 3G capability and a good browser and some fun to have apps, Super phones are all about being the media gadget with outrageous capabilities with a brilliant camera and brilliant displays, super fast processors (multi-cores), with 4G capability, great browsers and some serious apps. Almost all of the future phones announced by different phone companies almost all of them has plans to incorporate NFC technology in them. While Symbian was the uncrowned king 3 years back, the crown has moved to Android (in terms of market share at least...And I'm pretty sure iPhone owners will just smirk at market share).

Today mobile phones have become an integral part of our daily lives, more so than before. Let’s have a look at the current status of all the platforms mentioned in the earlier post and see where they stand.


iPhone (iOS)



Apple revolutionized the mobile world with its release of iPhone. They again did wonders with the concept of App store which became a raging success. Even though the iPod market was getting saturated, they virtually created a new market for tablets by releasing iPad. They brought out the Retina Display. Whatever the competition do as latest is already done by Apple. iOS has become the standard that other platforms are vying to become. Every product now wants a presence in the App store. But all this success was not without its share of problems. Apple is seen as closed and authoritarian system where they decide what apps to get approved or not. Their standoff with Adobe by not allowing Flash in iOS was major news. They had the infamous antenna-gate incident which took a lot of sheen from the release of iPhone 4 along with the search of Gizmodo heads house created a lot of negative publicity. Also they recently lost their superiority in the US market to Android. But by creating a CDMA version of the iPhone 4 and there by having it run on Verizon network could be a major change. All the folks that were running to Android because of AT&T will now have a choice to get iPhone from Verizon. The next version of iPhone is rumored to be coming with NFC capability and lots of other feature that the mobile enthusiasts are looking forward to.

Android



From being a small initiative from Google (via Open Handset Alliance) to the market leader, it has been quite a journey for Android. The growth for Android is just explosive. They grew from a 0 to more than 30% in just 3 years. In fact there was recent Canalys report where it said that Android has overtaken Symbian as the smart phone market leader in the last quarter of 2010. In these 3 years Android went through 5 new versions, each version bettering the product and bringing in more market share.(They also managed to give some interesting names for each versions, each being named after some dessert). Android is coming out in full swing with their latest version Android 3.0 (HoneyComb) which is said to made to target tablets. Tablets is the next arena where Android will have to fight it out with iOS and with the amount of new tablet releases announced for Android, it is going to be another interesting battle. Unlike iOS, Android is an open sourced platform and each handset makers have made different offerings (in terms of UI) to differentiate themselves from the competitors. This has augured well for Android (But this has also raised the fragmentation concerns amongst the developers too). The Android market is growing strong, catching up to the iTunes app store. One of the major negative feedback about Android market was about its usability and Google has heard those concerns and rectified it and come out with a new web version of the Android market.

Symbian



How the mighty have fallen. From being a Company that had more than 50% share of the smart phone market to just 30% (and eroding further) this is a big fall. While iOS and Android are in the next bout to retain the supremacy in the tablet segment, Symbian is still trying to be relevant in the mobile platforms. Symbian had gone through the cycle of being bought by Nokia, who open sourced it and later on pulled it back after some of the key members of the foundation like Samsung and Sony Ericsson has left it. And going by the response to the latest Nokia mobiles built on Symbian^3, it looks like it's about to reach its end of life. While everyone lauded Nokia N8 hardware, it was a unanimous review that the software (especially the UI) let it down. Rumor is that Nokia is shelving their plans to bring the next version of Symbian (Symbian^4) and put all their efforts in MeeGo (created by merging Moblin and Maemo. There were some other rumors that they might build phones based on Android or Windows Phone 7 OS (especially now that Stephen Elop is the new CEO, who was the head of the Microsoft Business division). But Nokia has denied these rumors. It looks like Nokia is betting on MeeGo for their future.

Windows Phone 7



Microsoft understood that carrying along dead weight won't do much help and no amount of beautification on the existing mobile will sell the Windows Mobile. So they stopped with Windows Mobile 6.5 went back to labs and came out with a brand new platform OS in Windows Phone 7. They clearly had put some thought and effort into it and the new Tile UI was unanimously appreciated. Even though starting afresh meant building apps from the scratch, Microsoft has always provided one of the best development environments in the form of Visual studio. In the new platform the UI is build using Silverlight and you can use the all familiar C# as you language. Windows Phone 7 started off with rave reviews and a plethora of devices from partners like HTC, Samsung, LG and Dell. They also made a good start with the Microsoft marketplace with a good number of apps to support. But even after this nice move from Microsoft, they are still not able make any dent in the market share. Microsoft has also made a nice move in the form of porting Windows 8 (an OS especially being made to target tablets) to run on ARM processors. But Apple has already had a great head start in the tablet division with its iPad and Android is now coming in there with their Honeycomb and it could be another case where Microsoft is a bit too late. But knowing Microsoft, you should never count them out; it might be a matter of time.

Blackberry



RIM is another company that has kind of lost a lot of its appeal. The 'crackberry' addicts are now moving away towards the iPhones and Droids. The enterprise world where Blackberry had a stronghold with its mail infrastructure is now waving. With Blackberry too the problem was about not innovating in the OS and the App store. While iPhone and Android built a fantastic environment with plenty of apps Blackberry was slow to move. The touch screen mobiles in the form of Storm were major embarrassment. The media capabilities were bad and the browser was one of the worst. Recently they tried to rectify these issues with releasing Blackberry OS 6 with a brand new webkit browser and better media capabilities. They also showcased a new tablet (Playbook) which has got some decent attention. RIM is still a major player in the mobile market but they are in a position from where they could go further down if they stop being innovative.

WebOS



Palm was becoming irrelevant in the mobile market after the rise of the iPhones and Androids. The first thing they did was to get Jon Rubinstein from Apple. Rubinstein was one of the brains behind the development of iPod. Then they did something similar to what Microsoft did. Then went back to the labs and started from the scratch and came out with webOS. webOS was reviewed positively by technology enthusiast across the world. Their deck of cards concept of UI was an entirely different offering compared to the competitors. Palm Pre and Palm Pixi were the two flagship devices for WebOS. Unfortunately for Palm webOS really didn't really hit it off even after all those hoopla's. One of the main reasons was the unavailability of apps in the palm web store as compared to the iPhone or Android offerings. Also the limitation in the number of devices could have been an issue. It looked like Palm was about to shut shop when HP bought the company over. Recently there have been announcements from HP about several new tablets coming to market running on webOS. This could mean a fresh new lease for webOS. But the choice on apps is something that HP will have to work to really push webOS to the top league.

Here is a graph showing the current market share of each OS



There are a few other platforms out there in the market like Brew from Qualcomm and Bada OS from Samsung which are trying to get into the main stream. It will be fun to see what’s going to happen in the mobile market in the future and what will be the status of each of these platforms.

Getting into Mobile App Development?? …Good luck to you

I recently ventured into Mobile App development and found out one thing-Mobile App development is a real messy affair, unless of course if you are targeting a single deployment environment. There are too much of Platforms with varying length of influences across geographies. That creates a business problem. Think of a Mobile App that has to be catered for a wide range of consumers across geographies. Think of Maintainability and Standardization. Have a read through this blog. I’ll explain a bit about all the Major players in the Mobile market and give a small thought on how to counter this problem. Please let me know whether it makes sense

Time for some Gyaan. The start of 21st century has a seen a flourish in the mobile industry. There are some stunning numbers awaiting us about the mobile connection. Around 80% of the world's population has access to mobile phone coverage, as of 2006. This is expected to cross 90% by 2010. The pace at which it is growing, I don’t think you need to wait till 2010 to see those numbers. Another important number to note down, mobile devices vastly outnumber personal computers, telephones, televisions, and all other media and communications platforms. Now these points do give us a picture of the state the Mobile Industry is in. Mobile has become an unavoidable part of our lives almost like an extension of an individual. This holds true both as in a domestic consumer and an enterprise consumer.

But unlike the PC industry, where you have a 800 pound gorilla controlling almost 90% of the whole market (Read as Microsoft), there is no clear supremacy by any particular platform in mobile. Let’s have a look at the biggies in the Mobile platform market.

1)Symbian

Definitely not an 800 pound gorilla, but if any platform comes close to being one, this is it. With over 60% of market share (Thanks to its close association with Nokia) Symbian leads the pack. It had a wonderful run with its vastly successful S 40 series and currently shining out with its more polished latest release S–60. S-60 has helped Symbian to get a stronghold in the smart phone market which is being threatened by the new entrants. S-60 also features in non Nokia phones like Motorola and Samsung which has helped it in gaining more market in U.S (Nokia is the prima donna choice in the European and Asian market, not the same in US). Symbian has a very good developer base which is not an easy feat to achieve, and exactly the reason why Symbian will hold its lead for a good amount of time in the future.
Nokia recently brought Symbian for over $400 mn and what did they do after spending all that cash…They Open source it !!!!! Yeah you heard it right…They are going to give it away for free and make it as Symbian foundation. Looks dumb on first thought but the mobile market experts beg to differ. With Google coming out with its Open platform Android and “Daddy of all Open sources” Linux gaining more market share, it looks like a very smart move from Nokia.

You can find all about the Tools and SDK’s for Symbian in here.
And for more detailed read try this:

2)Windows Mobile

The original 800 pound Gorilla from the PC market have been trying use its muscle power to get into the Mobile OS market. To a good extent they managed to do well by having close to 13% of the overall smartphone market. But coming from Microsoft , you expect them to be at the top and that is the intend too. Major players like Sony Ericsson, Motorola , HTC etc are coming up with their latest smart phones like XPeria, Moto,HTC Touch Diamond and Pro etc (all of which are touted as iPhone Killers) are all based on Windows Mobile Platform. That shows the belief of these vendors in the capability of Windows Mobile Platform. When it comes to the developer base, nobody comes even close to what Microsoft has. With the provision given to code in a stripped down .NET environment and amazing Tool support in the form of Visual Studio ,Microsoft is here to stay in Mobile App development. Easy of synchronization with the PC also helps. The current version available is Windows Mobile 6.0. Windows Mobile 7 Codenamed "Photon” is a major upgrade planned for release in 2nd half of 2009. Not much else is known about the release, though leaked information suggests a revamped UI, multi-touch and motion-related features.
For more detailed read have a look at this:

3)RIM (Research In Motion)

You might not have heard about the Canadian wireless company RIM , But you definitely would have heard about their offering, Blackberry. RIM provides the OS that runs in Blackberry. Blackberry is a very familiar name in the Enterprise Community because of its ease of use in emailing, a feature that was unrivaled till now, until the phenomenon called iPhone came by. RIM is gunning to have a good run in the consumer market for the smartphone with Blackberry. They have done well so far. The competition is fierce in this segment. RIM usually develops its own softwares for its devices and you don’t see too much of third party developer support for RIM. This is OK as long they are planning to do well with the Enterprise customers, but to stay alive in the consumer market you need to build a good developer base.
For a brief overview have a look at this :

3)Linux

Embedded Linux has been ported to a variety of processors not suited for use as the processor of desktop or server computers.It is an alternative to the—usually proprietary—bespoke assembler or C software largely used in embedded development. Advantages compared to other embedded operating systems include: the source code can be modified and redistributed; relatively small footprint (a typical installation may require less than two megabytes of memory); no royalty or licensing costs; mature and stable; and a large support base. Embedded Linux systems combine the Linux kernel with a small set of free software utilities.
Motorola had in the past rolled out a lot of Smartphones using Embedded Linux and recently Open Moko is released into the market which is seen a gamechanger. Google Android also uses a Linux kernel at its heart. As said earlier being the “Daddy of all Open sources”, there is no shortage in the developer base and community support.
Try this :

4)iPhone

Apple shook the work with the release of iPhone. A touch phone was unthought of and even ridiculed by almost all other Phone makers. iPhone made them eat their words and they are scrambling around and trying to bring into market what popularly called as iPhone Killers. iPhone with its amazing touchscreen functionality and an even better browsing experience with an improved safari browser has really created a storm. The next version of iPhone was released last month and it managed to create the same frenzy that it created when it debuted. But in the version 2.0 what really made us to notice was its Software(apart from its 3G and push mail support). Few months before the iPhone 2.0 release Apple open sourced the iPhone SDK and came out with the concept of App Store where in individual developers can create applications for iPhone and host them in App store with a revenue share business model.
Coming from Apple, the iPhone app development is possible only with a Mac machine. Even though that reduces the scope for the SDK the number of applications that was hosted in App store are really encouraging. With plans to release the phone in over 72 countries, this one is really worth a watch.

You can get your iPhone SDK from here :
Also read this :

5)Palm

Palm with its Palm OS was a rage some time back. In fact there was a time when Palm was synonymous with Smart Phone. But their failure to provide a better platform in the recent times has eroded their market share and their developer base. PalmSource was acquired by Chinese Co. and there were plans to create a new platform for Palm on Linux kernel. Nothing has come of it yet. The way things are going for Palm, one could only see a sinking ship.

More on Palm OS:

7)Android

There is not even a single Hand Phone that is currently available in the market that uses the Android platform, Yet the whole world is downloading it , studying it and creating applications in it. The sole reason being, it’s an Open Mobile platform being developed by Google. But again it’s not just Google, its from the Open HandSet Alliance which is a business alliance made of Google, HTC, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Samsung, LG, T-Mobile, Nvidia and Wind River Systems to develop open standards for mobile devices. Android platform is build over the Linux OS and comes with an SDK, Development and debugging tools and emulators. Google also conducted Android Developer Challenge, which is a competition for the most innovative application for Android. Google offered prizes totaling upto 10 million US dollars.

Get the Android SDK and source code from here :
Read this too:

There are some more platforms or App development suites in the market like BREW, FlashLite, but not worth getting covered (or you could call me lazy). One could say that the same holds true for a Mobile Web app development too, but in a different sense. You have an array of Mobile browsers which are tightly bound with one of the above Platforms. Like IE for windows Mobile, Jb5 for symbian, Safari for iPhone etc..and other independent browsers like Opera. Even firefox is coming out with a mobile version…Watch out opera. But lately almost all the browsers are capable enough to show the original web contents as such without the need of any special definitions.

Coming back to my original statement.Now that you have seen the wide range of Platforms that are available in the Mobile App development, you would also be knowing the head ache involved in it. A Mobile App that needs to be catered for a wide range of consumers across geographies will give you a maintainability Hell. And add to that the thought of having Standardization. In a PC world you know you have to create the App for a particular platform and even if it has to be ubiquitous, you need to support it for only 3 OS. This gives way to a business problem and also to a opportunity to create a solution and selling it. There is an idea on hold. Why can’t we have a Mobile Code Generator?? Think of creating a DSL which will translate into Platform specific code. There goes your maintainability problem , add to it the Standardization too. Ain’t that Brilliant (Or Crazy) ??? Either way…Do please give me you valuable feed backs