Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
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All entries are written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant of Abiro, that has a long experience in strategic planning, developing embedded and Java software, usability aspects, and the mobile phone industry in general. You can also read the latest Mobile News entries on your phone via wap.abiro.com, and we provide many News Feeds from popular news services. For advertising and contribution queries, please use the feedback form. News feed (local) FeedBurner Feed
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Saturday, November 25, 2006
After-market vs native phone applications
Mike Rowehl has another interesting piece on Email Clients - Java vs Native App, where it was found that the Java client easily beat the Nokia client. He tested Google's Gmail client and Flurrymail.
This might be a special case for Nokia, but if so Nokia needs to do some serious improvements to its e-mail client.
There are a few things that should be noted for after-market vs native applications (after-market applications being mainly made for Java ME, Symbian OS and Windows Mobile, in a very quickly falling curve):
- The time-to-market for after-market applications is way shorter than for native applications, as after-market applications can be released when they are available, not years later due to phone development lead time.
- After-market applications are much easier to test and quality-assure, as they can easily be deployed on the market as test versions rather than being tested only in the lab.
Regarding specifically Java vs native:
- Java is available in many more phones than Symbian OS. It's a ratio of 10:1. That doesn't explain quality/feature issues though, as the volume should be enough for that.
- Java applications are typically complemented by a service that in the case of e-mail and browsing (see e.g. Opera Mini) optimizes the information transfer, hence leading to better performance and less airtime, and typically also to a smaller and more efficient client.
Mike: Normally the Java stuff is kinda memory heavy compared to a normal app
That's not necessarily true: Java ME applications tend to be much smaller than e.g. Symbian and Windows Mobile applications, and data-wise could be too, as Java ME developers are probably more aware of memory limitations (due to experience) than such for Symbian and Windows Mobile, and due to the client/server setup mentioned above.
This might be a special case for Nokia, but if so Nokia needs to do some serious improvements to its e-mail client.
There are a few things that should be noted for after-market vs native applications (after-market applications being mainly made for Java ME, Symbian OS and Windows Mobile, in a very quickly falling curve):
- The time-to-market for after-market applications is way shorter than for native applications, as after-market applications can be released when they are available, not years later due to phone development lead time.
- After-market applications are much easier to test and quality-assure, as they can easily be deployed on the market as test versions rather than being tested only in the lab.
Regarding specifically Java vs native:
- Java is available in many more phones than Symbian OS. It's a ratio of 10:1. That doesn't explain quality/feature issues though, as the volume should be enough for that.
- Java applications are typically complemented by a service that in the case of e-mail and browsing (see e.g. Opera Mini) optimizes the information transfer, hence leading to better performance and less airtime, and typically also to a smaller and more efficient client.
Mike: Normally the Java stuff is kinda memory heavy compared to a normal app
That's not necessarily true: Java ME applications tend to be much smaller than e.g. Symbian and Windows Mobile applications, and data-wise could be too, as Java ME developers are probably more aware of memory limitations (due to experience) than such for Symbian and Windows Mobile, and due to the client/server setup mentioned above.
