What mobile platform should I start learning? [closed]

Answer 1

Here's the platforms in order of future popularity:

1) iPhone

It has three moats anyone has to cross to catch up - accessories, apps, and hardware add-ons

Accessories for the iPhone and touch can be found all over. They have iPhone/iPod docking radios in many hotel rooms now...

Apps of course, Apple has a deep lead in - but the lead is greater than it would appear because in addition to all of the apps, there are now tons of developers with iPhone experience. Sure some of the initial apps are meaningless fluff but there are now countless categories with deep teams of people working on real applications.

The last moat is new but no-one is close enough to doing anything similar that they can prevent it - and that's the ability with 3.0 for companies to build specific devices and talk to them over bluetooth and the dock connector. The TomTom car iPhone dock (more than just a dock, it also houses a more powerful GPS reciever the TomTom app can make use of) is the tip of the iceburg in this regard. Medical devices, analysis tools, etc.

2) Palm Pre

The Palm Pre has the advantage that a lot of Palm users that really want to stick with them have a great upgrade path, and the Pre has the same advantage Apple has in that they are building a single device themselves that makes it easier to build an application that takes full advantage of the platform and really fits in well with the philosophy of the device. Only the more limited nature of the SDK is preventing a much larger selection of apps, but I think we'll see this platform grow pretty well. The only danger is, I can see them being bought out my Microsoft and then they are toast.

3) Android

Android has the advantage of more devices. But that also makes it a lot harder to build and test apps, and to write apps that take best advantage of specific features. I think there will be more physical devices around than the Pre but I'll bet in three years there's more application use going on with the Pre than the Android platform.

For ease of development, I'd rate the Pre first (unless you are not very familiar with CSS), the iPhone second, and Android third (simply because not as many resources exist/will exist to help you with Android development, it has about as large a framework set as the iPhone to make things easy for you).

Symbian and Windows Mobile are simply out of the game. Unless they buy one of these three they are done as a serious platform for mobile software, despite how many devices may be around right now (see: Android issues regarding device range). They also just don't have either the framework or IDE richness these three platforms have and are growing every day...

Answer 2

Programming for mobile clients has historically been a nightmare. The fragmented nature of the mobile world exacerbates any problems you have encountered in the desktop/server market.

If your goal is to make money as a small developer you should focus your efforts as much as possible. To this end the iPhone is the only real choice, the cost of testing, porting and certifying your application on J2ME, Symbian or Windows Mobile very quickly overcomes the potential market advantage these platforms have.

You also need to consider the technical requirements of the applications you are going to develop. For example, while J2ME is 'supported' on more handset than any of the other possibilities, the security model restricts the usefulness of J2ME if you want to do 'cool' things (at least this has repeatedly been a problem for me). The fragmented support for JSRs is also a major problem. J2ME can run on a lot on non smart phones but do these handsets support the features you want?

Also consider the handset distribution across your target audience. Location, income and age of your potential users will greatly determine the handsets that you can and should target.

My own experience is that mobile application programming is a loosing battle on Symbian, Windows Mobile and BREW. It is a organizational nightmare on J2ME. But many people are making money on the Apple App Store. And Nokia now has Ovi... RIM has a store, Windows Mobile will have a store... Maybe Apple's success will push the other handset vendors to get their act together and make it easier.

A note on your criteria about handset cost: MTK (most of the Chinese/Taiwanese knock-offs) would be the cheapest, but you can only install on the handsets at manufacture time so it's not really an option... Java handsets can be cheap, but the porting issue is a pain. One international company I worked for spent more than half a million on handset acquisition and client porting every year as they had to test their applications on each new Java handset and even the same handset with different firmware (just enter N95 in the Wurfl and you can see how many different firmwares there can be when the European operators do silly things like install custom firmware so the Vodafone UK and O2 UK N95 are not the same.) Windows Mobile can be the same, every new release has different API(s) and the OEMs change things... If you count the cost of acquiring even a few Java or Windows Mobile handsets to ensure your application works across different OS editions and firmwares then you have spent a tidy sum. Might as well get an iPhone or two.

So, my suggestions?

1. iPhone
2. Symbian (2 and 3 could switch depending on features you need)
3. J2ME
4. Windwos Mobile
5. Android
6. BREW (if you are in the Americas)
7. RIM
8. Flash
9. MTK

Answer 3

I've shipped code on iPhone, Symbian, BREW, Java ME, Windows Mobile, Palm. Personally I enjoy working on the iPhone the most.

All of the above as well as Android, allow you to download and run the SDK for free. I would recommend you try out the ones you think you will like most and run your programs in the simulators. Figure out which one you enjoy and then throw yourself into that.

Answer 4

I think 3-4 platforms have a future. But it depends on what platform do you like and how you like freedom in distributing your applications :)

1. Windows Phone 7
   • .NET and Silverlight
   • through Windows Phone Marketplace
2. Android
   • Java
   • through Android Market (fees) or like normal applications
3. iPhone
   • Objective-C or Java (Developing iPhone Applications using Java)
   • through iPhone Market
   • pay some fees ($99/year)
   • The Incredible App Store Hype
   • You need Mac (Mac OS) for development (thanks to ctacke)
4. Windows Mobile (my favorite)
   • C++ or .NET
   • free distribution, just like normal applications
   • Microsoft have a market, too - here
5. Java
   • J2ME or JavaFX

Answer 5

Now that Nokia has bought TrollTech(Qt) for the purposes of creating a great mobile platform on top of Symbian, you'd think that the OSS crowd would at least mention it.

Symbian has a huge market compared to all of the others. Qt is the backbone of KDE, allows easy cross-platform development, and is very well designed.

You'd think that:

1. A huge market
2. A great, LGPL'd cross-platform framework
3. An app store

... would be a future hit just waiting to happen. You certainly have a better chance of making money than being one more app in tens of thousands of others, with users expecting to pay no more than $0.99.

Symbian is also starting on the path to opening up the code. Actually, as the Qt mobile platform matures, the underlying OS may not really even be that important.

Answer 6

All one needs to do is to note the tag counts, on the top right of this question, in order to get a subset population (at stackoverflow.com) of where the popularity is.

As of my comment, the tag counts were:

• iphone × 4829
• windowsmobile × 606
• android × 523
• j2me × 301
• symbian × 106

The are other factors, obviously. Do you enjoy writing for Windows Mobile over iPhone or J2ME? Do you know J2ME but want to get into iPhone development? I dont think there is any one correct answer, but the tag-counts do say something about popularity.