The use of mobile devices, and more specifically the use of smartphones, represents a unique opportunity for both application developers and brand owners to generate new revenue and brand awareness. The combination of always-on 3G Internet, GPS, and portability means that consumers are increasingly turning to their smartphones for business, shopping, and entertainment. Unlike open platforms like the Internet, smartphones are separated by a range of operating systems, phones, and carrier compatibility.
Market Share Trends
The mobile operating systems targeted are Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0, RIM’s Blackberry 4.6+ and Google’s Android. These are the fastest growing mobile operating system platforms; others, such as Symbian and Windows Mobile, are experiencing slower market share growth and are also suffering from platform “fragmentation”, further reducing their effective market share. Of all the competing operating systems, only the iPhone/iPod Touch allows near-universal application development.
The risk of fragmentation
Simply put, software fragmentation is incompatibility arising from software that starts from a common codebase and, over time, through updates and revisions, branches off into multiple sets of unique code. A non-technological example would be the English language; today there are numerous dialects of English around the world. Some are easily recognizable, while others are beyond comprehension without a translation. Fragmentation makes it impossible to create one version of an app per platform; instead, the developer needs to create multiple versions, each tailored to a specific device or operating system.
There is significant platform fragmentation with non-Apple devices, particularly the Blackberry OS, with a large list of legacy devices, such as the blackberry 8100, 8700, and 8800 families. For example, the Blackberry Storm 2 runs os5.0 , it has a touch screen, accelerometer and Open GL for 3D graphics. However, the Blackberry Bold 9700, released at the same time, uses the traditional keyboard/non-touch screen layout, does not include Open GL support, and uses a different screen resolution. Things are potentially worse with Google’s Android, due to its open source nature and lack of standardized models. Each manufacturer can create a totally unique Android phone that runs on a variety of OS versions, from Android 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.0.1, and 2.1.
The iPhone lineup can be divided into three main groups; the original iPhone, iPod Touch and iPhone 3GS. The vast majority of software written for the platform will run on the original iPhone, except for apps that use compass, MMS, or GPS. The iPod Touch doesn’t have a camera, so any app that needs a camera won’t work. The iPhone 3GS is the newest model and is becoming the go-to model for app developers, especially those using location-based and live video services.
When developing native Blackberry apps, the largest group of supported devices are the Blackberry Curve 8300, 8900, and 8500 series, followed by the Bold 9000, Bold 9700, and Blackberry Tour.
The Android operating system has a large number of devices, but the models marketed under “with Google” can be considered as reference phones with common specifications and functionality. The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, T-Mobile G1, Sprint Samsung Moment all fall into this category. HTC’s custom Android devices are also popular; these include the HTC Hero and the Verizon Droid Eris.
Application development tools
Native iPhone apps are built with Apple’s Objective C language using Xcode and then submitted to the “App Store” for distribution to the general public. There are several third-party tools that allow development with other languages such as Actionscipt (Flash CS5), Lua, and Javascript. Third-party development tools take the higher-level scripting languages listed above, cover the code in Objective C, and also export the finished app as an .ipa file for submission to the App Store. Each of these third-party tools supports at least several unique iPhone features, such as the accelerometer, multi-touch input to varying degrees. Other features such as GPS location and camera may be limited until these tools mature.
Blackberry applications can be built with the Blackberry JDE Plugin for Eclipse using the Java language. Applications can also be built with Javascript-based Phonegap, which can reduce the level of developer expertise needed to start development. Blackberry apps can be sold through the official app store known as Blackberry App World or can be sold through third-party vendors like Mobihand.com. Android is also based on Java and also uses the Eclipse IDE with the Android Developer Tools plugin. Google doesn’t oversee the types of apps that can be built for Android; however, Google reserves the right to remove malicious applications.
Types of applications to create
On the iPhone, most of the apps currently available are games; they can range from ported Adobe Flash games with minimal functionality to full 3D games using Unity 3D. Outside of games, many iPhone apps are mobile extensions of websites that use open APIs. Examples include Tweetie 2 which uses the Twitter API and Insight which provides two-way synchronization with Basecamp. These apps can be built by a single person or small teams and don’t require custom-designed artwork or interfaces. Today’s indie game developers are being overshadowed by large studios with 3D artists, modelers, and programmers with access to branded IPs.
Most non-game apps are complex widgets that talk to third-party APIs and follow Apple’s interface guidelines, reducing the need for graphic artists. Blackberry apps are mostly commercial apps like Poynt, with fewer games on the platform compared to Apple and Google offerings.
Today, technology like augmented reality, which overlays data from the internet, live camera feeds, and GPS into a seamless experience, will begin to mature next year and become mainstream. Applications that use the camera to read barcodes to compare prices will also gain prominence. We hope this article has given you a clearer understanding of the smartphone market and its associated ecosystems. Currently, web developers have been on the sidelines waiting for tools to mature and take advantage of their web-based skills.