Mobile Platforms thoughts for 2008 3
Nowadays tech junkies have a real problem.. there are just too many cool gadgets to carry around.
The convergence has started and I personally believe that the cell phone will become the “do it all” device of the future. We already have cell phones with decent cameras, PIM software and GPS. Add to this a good storage solution and you got everything you’ll need on a daily basis.
The problem so far has been the platform. You’ve got Windows Mobile which has been around for a while, still it seems sluggish and is missing the “cool” factor many of us geeks miss… Nokia has the Maemo platform for the N800 which is pretty cool but there is no GSM support. Nokia also has the Symbian OS which allows us to develop in C and Python but it is not compatible with most other manufacturers. Java has been around for most mobile platforms and there are some pretty decent apps and games but you get the feeling that JAVA is not build right into the platform.. some phones even have a separate JAVA area for you to start your JAVA applications.
Apple has released the sexy iPhone and it is really appealling. Still, the SDK took long to come out and the platform remains too closed for any serious investment in it. Besides that, here in Europe we need 3,5G to have decent Internet access and the iPhone does not provide that.
Then, Google came up with Android. It’s impressive… Google can generate quite a hype around a mobile platform for which there is no hardware yet! This seems to be the way to go.. this way when it arrives at the market there should be lots of cool free software around the web for it, especially with money being offered to the best apps!
Nonetheless Apple’s iPhone still has the sex appeal that most phones only dream of having….
Adobe has been focusing on AIR, Thermo, etc.. they have come up with great technologies for Web and Desktop but delayed the Adobe Flash Lite. Personally I’m not very interested in a stripped down AS2 only Flash version… this could be because they’re hopping the hardware will evolve to support the whole Flash runtime… The actionscript engine uses the TamarinVM so it should be ported to most of mainstreammobile platforms soon.
Well, this post is becoming too long, I just though i’d write here my 2 cents. I’ll be keeping and eye on Google’s Android and the iPhone.. wouldn’t it be a beautiful mariage?
