Mobile Platform - A Developer's Nightmare


Software developers are flocking to the mobile platform en masse lured by exponential growth in subscriptions that are fast approaching one billion. However, mobile phones present different challenges to PC software development. The most significant hurdle is size – both physical and virtual. Mass market handset typically sport 512 KB on-board memory, with 2 MB or more available on smart phones.

Another challenge is security. Since data is transmitted over the air (using well known frequencies), rogue intrusions and interceptions are a real threat. Advanced encryption techniques only add to the another limitation of mobile phones – power. Network traffic places a huge demand on processors and therefore power consumption. Inelegant designs place limitations on application usage (hours).

One final hurdle is choice of development environment. Developers are faced with a plethora of tools: Java ME, EclipseME, C++, Adobe Flash, QT and many others. Then add to that cocktail a slew of different operating systems offered by phone manufacturers including Java VM (Sun Microsystems), Symbian/Maemo (Nokia), Android (Google), Moblin (Linux), WindowsCE, UIQ (Sony Ericsson) and MeeGo (Intel/Nokia).

Until there is consensus on a mobile OS and SDK APIs, the dream of reaping millions from mobile applications will remain just that: a mobile dream.

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