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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Sunday, January 14, 2007
Palm OS's future looks bleak
Developers Speak Out About PalmOS indicates many are starting to give up on any real evolution of Palm OS. I'm not sure I understand the fascination for specifically Linux as the future, as there are still way too many flavors of application platforms for Linux, and there is no clear dominating player in sight. I found it interesting to read that Windows Mobile is seen as taking quick strides in increasing its market share. In Europe we still don't see much of that, where Nokia's Series 60 gets all the attention when it comes to more advanced mobile platforms.
Another thing that can be read out from this note, and that I've covered before, is that in a mobile service setting the real value and cost is in the mobile service, not the mobile application (the latter is just an enabler): To achieve the maximum coverage for a mobile service the provider is agnostic to the after-market application platforms in the phones and builds solutions for all popular platforms. It's just business, and the work involved in making and running the service is probably anyway way beyond the cost of developing a few mobile applications. If they go for a browser- or messaging-based approach, they don't even have to build any mobile applications, but many services can't be properly enabled using that approach.
Of course stand-alone mobile games will still mainly be made for Java ME / MIDP and BREW (even in the foreseeable future).
Another thing that can be read out from this note, and that I've covered before, is that in a mobile service setting the real value and cost is in the mobile service, not the mobile application (the latter is just an enabler): To achieve the maximum coverage for a mobile service the provider is agnostic to the after-market application platforms in the phones and builds solutions for all popular platforms. It's just business, and the work involved in making and running the service is probably anyway way beyond the cost of developing a few mobile applications. If they go for a browser- or messaging-based approach, they don't even have to build any mobile applications, but many services can't be properly enabled using that approach.
Of course stand-alone mobile games will still mainly be made for Java ME / MIDP and BREW (even in the foreseeable future).
