Android Developers Win Smackdown Vs. iPhone, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile, Microsoft Asserts It Has Promising Smartphone Future, & More Mobile Madness Highlights
Erin Kutz3/11/10Comments (14)Follow @erkutz
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the iPhones’s inability to support Flash—a perennial criticism of the device.
He took his far share of flak, though. So did our keynoter, Windows Phone evangelist Anthony Kinney, when he gave us a look into the company’s plans for its 7 Series phone, due out in “holiday 2010″ (vague, we know).
And it turns out that Windows’ problem isn’t just one of design or construction, but of marketing (a point brought up earlier in the event by Kinney). “A lot of people out there have Windows Mobile devices and don’t even know it,” said Hofer-Shall, who works for Forrester Research but spoke on the Windows platform from his personal, not professional standpoint, as he has a tech blog outside of work.
William Sulinski, co-founder and CEO of mCaddie, makers of the golf analytics AccelGolf app, represented the BlackBerry platform with the logic and composure that often categorizes this smartphone, or at least its users. He also has iPhone and Android versions of his app, but said he likes the older demographic he can target with BlackBerry (made by Research in Motion), and the huge user base of the phone.
But he had no pretenses about the challenge in developing for RIM’s device. “What it does is separate the men from the boys,” Sulinski said, with a nod to the fact that the varying screen sizes among BlackBerry devices require different coding.
In the end, it seems, no platform is perfect. But each one seems to have developers who love it.
Other highlights from Mobile Madness — The New Future of Computing included:
—Nuance Communications’ vice president of product management, Matt Revis, walked us through the company’s plans for gesture recognition technology for mobile phones. The speech recognition software company already has a big hit with its iPhone app for translating voice to text.
—Andrew Capener, director of service provider marketing for mobility at Cisco Systems, explained how Cisco, which recently acquired local wireless broadband leader Starent Networks, has a stake in the mobile world, due to the exponential growth in data trafficked through mobile networks.
—The 150,000+ mobile apps that Apple boasts of isn’t a lot, or at least not compared with the number of websites that exist on the Internet, Greg Raiz, founder and CEO of app development company Raizlabs, said during our executive panel. Meaning, there’s still plenty more apps to come. He also said he thinks this year will be the year his mom gets a smartphone.
—We concluded the afternoon by inviting about 10 mobile companies (most of which can be seen in our online mobile showcase) to give 90-second lightning presentations of their mission and products. They even stuck to that time constraint. And so did we! (The event ended on time to the minute.)
The take-home message of the day? Things are only beginning for the mobile industry. We’re excited to see which mobile platform, if any, ends up winning the real-life smackdown in development, and all the new moves the industry innovators make in the process.
Erin Kutz is an Associate Editor for Xconomy. You can reach her by e-mail at ekutz@xconomy.com or by phone at (617) 252-0700, or follow her on Twitter at @erkutz.
Jesse Nahan
3/11/10 4:59 pm
Congrats to the Android duo, but I was suprised that the Palm Pre wasn’t included. As a developer for the Pre (I built the Forbes Magazine app), I like the speed and the versatility in building WebOS apps. Like the Android, the Pre runs apps in the background and has powerful location tools for developers.
There’s a terrifc WebOS development community and Palm, unlike Apple, is supportive of the unofficial “homebrew” apps.
Palm’s currently blanketing major cities with ads and product placement on “24″ — Jack Bauer uses a Pre! Though I wish they would’ve kicked their advertising into high gear months ago.
Zach
3/11/10 5:14 pm
Excellent write up!
It was indeed a lively event with good arguments for all platforms. I think it’s fair to say that there were two big takeaways: 1) no platform is perfect – all have flaws. 2) mobile is hot and all platforms are worth developing for today.
@Jesse-
Palm definitely came up in the discussion. The general consensus seemed that the device is way underrated (one of the iPhone team members actually carries a Pre), but the small user-base makes the platform slightly less appealing to develop for in the short term. Palm has a great strategy for development, it just needs more developers like you to realize that.
You’re absolutely right: the marketing is a great idea – something they should have done ages ago.
vara411
3/11/10 5:38 pm
Umm… webOS? Palm Pre? Hello? I realize it’s a very small and young ecosystem, but there’s lots of developers who would fiercely defend webOS as the best development platform, had they been invited.
This article only tells part of the story.
Wade Roush
3/12/10 7:37 am
@Jesse, @vara411: Thanks for your comments, which are fair. I would have loved to include both webOS/Palm and Symbian in the Mobile Smackdown, but there were a couple of constraints. First, we only had an hour for this part of the event, and we knew that if we put too many people on stage, it would limit each participants’ contribution. So we needed to draw the line somewhere. Second, while we had plenty of iPhone and Android advocates to choose from, we had a very hard time finding people to represent Windows Phone and BlackBerry. My sense was that it would have been even harder to find people to defend webOS and Symbian. But I could have been wrong about that, and if we do this type of event again in the future, I’d like to try to be more inclusive. Anyway, thanks.
info
3/17/10 10:47 am
Jay H
4/24/11 8:23 am
Have to agree with Zach, it seems as though there was no clear winner it the App wars. As identified, all platforms have flaws and issues, and all App markets are worth developing.
Lively debate, good read, no A vs B that can sometimes take over thexe kind of events.
Peter Drinnan
9/6/11 11:19 pm
I am a little hesitant to invest a lot of effort in iPhone development as it seems the market is getting saturated with Apps and there are other problems with distribution too. I know some iPhone developers who are really disappointed with their download results after spending months developing apps for iPhone. The way I see it, the only real opportunity is in developing niche apps for specific corporate markets and the platform I would pick for that is Android because of the sheer volume of Android sales. See http://www.businessinsider.com/android-versus-iphone-smartphone-share-2011-4
After 8 months of developing Blackberry apps, I am convinced that Android is the way to go.