There's a lot of mobile platforms out there at the moment; iPhone, Android, WebOS, Symbian. If creating a startup for mobile development (i.e. as a commercial endeavour, not a hobby), which mobile platform is worth focusing on?
Which mobile programming environment do you recommend for a startup to target? [closed]
I don't know about the programming, but I love my iPod touch ;-) And there are so many great apps for it.. –
Budgie
which market are you targetting? the american market is very different to the rest of the world. –
Swore
up until abotu 1 year ago, america's dominant smartphone was blackberry devices whereas in europe it was symbian. –
Swore
First, ignore technology to start and instead look at the business model for each platform. Ask if the platform itself has a reliable means of producing revenue long term. If so, then ask if the platform presents a business model that allows a developer to make money. If your not sure about such stuff ask someone with business experience.Beyond an initial flurry of interest, nifty tech can't sustain a platform if the economic underpinnings are not there. Even if a platform prospers, it doesn't mean that small developers will.
As near as I can tell, Android isn't actually a platform but more like a loose standard. Each phone vendor can customize it to a high degree so there doesn't seem to be a means by which you can write a single app and know it will run on all Android phones. That will cause major market fragmentation so even if Android takes off big time that doesn't mean that every developer, especially small developers, will be able to sell to the entire installed base.
Long term, open platforms (like contemporary PCs) present major problems for small developers. There is no intellectual property protection so developers who don't have large institutional customers they can sue can't prevent piracy. Security will become a major issues as black hats target people's phones. There will be a huge number of crappy or actually fraudulent apps cranked out that make end users leery of buying software from a vendor they don't recognize. This means small developers will have a hard time breaking into the market.
One of my professors in college told me something that has proven true in my 20+ years in the computer industry: The major strength of every design is also its critical weakness and vice versa. The very things that make open platforms attractive to developers and customers are also the same things that will cause them major problems. The very things that turn developers off about closed platforms are the things that provide the greatest benefit to developers long term. Having a closed platform's vendor vet every app slows down acceptance and limits choice but improves overall quality, security and consumer trust. And so on...
Career wise, there is a difference in paths between running your own business and learning an API so that others will hire you. In the former, you should develop for the platform that has the best business model and the one you would most like to use as a consumer. For the latter, you should develop for the platform with the most buzz. Even if it flops, no one will find it odd that experience is on your resume. Just rough rules of thumb.
+1 for: "The major strength of every design is also its critical weakness and vice versa." –
Ussery
I've written and launched two mobile apps on the iphone over the last year and both have had success in economic terms. One app is free and tied to a web service and it has a significant impact on the popularity and number of users for the web service. The second app is a paid app - and I can tell you that it is producing some actual revenue, enough that if I was a solo developer it'd be paying my bills.
That said I think that if you're launching a company for mobile products you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. So either support multiple platforms or aim to have multiple products on your main platform.
I think there is big potential in Android but at the moment it is totally unproven as a platform where you can actually make money (please point out some info on this if you have any I am really curious about the economic potential of Android).
Blackberry is also interesting since pretty much everyone I know who's under 25 has one, but it is a platform where selling apps doesn't seem to have caught on that well. I've discussed it with some heavy blackberry users and apps are not something they really care that much about. So you'd want to try to find out some numbers regarding Blackberry app sales.
In the end it depends on your target market/product.
Are you building an enterprise targeted mobile app? - Build for Blackberry first and perhaps iPhone next.
Do you want to launch one consumer focused mobile app with a large feature set and perhaps some web service integration? - target a few platforms and make it available to as many users as possible.
Are you trying to build a series of small purpose built apps? - Definitely start with iPhone and get some revenue first.
My 2 cents.
This is also a great answer; pity I can't pick two answers for my choice. This should definitely be voted up though. –
Mccaffrey
Not Iphone. Because of Apple and this strange policy of application approuval. You could not afford to close your entreprise only because apple has decided that your application is "not ok"
Edit : For sure, the AppStore has a huge potential client base. But it's also the only "mobile market place" from where you can be removed.
Or has seen a nice idea in it and decided to roll it out themselves in the next version. –
Sligo
On the other hand, what if you started the business with the idea to make money? Does it make sense to ignore a platform with tens of millions of devices? –
Supercool
It's make sense to see the Apple policy as a threat in a SWOT analysis, and it's huge users bases as a Opportunity, for sure. Have you hard data about the number of user of apple store VS Android Market VS PalmStore VS BlackBerry vs ... ? a percentage of "making money" application for each market could be nice too. Sorry for my english. –
Minaminabe
about appleStore profit : mashable.com/2009/05/14/apple-iphone-apps-profit –
Minaminabe
If you are having a hard time deciding, why not just develop for all of them at the same time!
PhoneGap is a utility that lets you build apps that run on several different platforms. It's great, and the guys at Nitobi are very willing to help you out.
I dont know the current status, but about six months ago any application that was developed using phonegap got denied by Apple. –
Isolate
Yeah, way old news for them now. Everything is fine if you use the most recent versions. It was primarily because people weren't smart enough to rename their apps from the default "Phonegap Project." And it threw a flag at Apple to deny all of them. Once they chatted, they took out any default names and added a version file that assured Apple the issue was resolved. As long as you have that version file, you are on a level playing field with everyone else. –
Magistracy
I suspect at the moment you would get the largest pool of potential customers if you developed for the IPhone. Apple do have some issues with their control freakery but, hey, people use their AppStore.
Personally I am going to develop for Android because I absolutely love the design of their OS for mobile systems. Just brilliant. I also suspect that Android will increase in market share rapidly over the next few years. It's also Java instead of objective C so I would think easier to port to other environments as required. I'm doing development for fun though so if I make no money then who cares. If you actually need to make the development pay for itself then I guess IPhone is probably the way to go while keeping a close eye on Android.
The thing about the AppStore for the IPhone to keep in mind is that, not only do people use it, they also PAY for things from it. Android still doesn't let you sell to any country so even if they were to technically have more users - those users might not be able to pay for your stuff even if they wanted to. This is being worked on by google and will change but it does limit the amount of money your app could currently make.
It depends on your target audience. Business users will most likely use BlackBerrys or Windows Mobile (at least in my experience). Consumers (at least those willing to pay for software) will more likely use IPhones.
frankster: I live in Europe... –
Avron
It depends on the application somewhat, but if you are serious about a startup it makes the most sense to start with the iPhone. The frameworks allow for the most "wow" factor with products, and there is simply a huge lead in number of units, and number of users used to running many different applications.
You may also want to consider other platforms (my vote for second to go after would be Android, and then Palm in third although that depends heavily on what your application is).
But something to consider is, you may want to start by doing one platform really well and if your application idea is well received, branch out. It's a lot of effort to develop for multiple platforms and each platform has various unique features you want to spend time taking full advantage of. I would also advise against using any of the cross-platform frameworks for the same reason, because when you target all you cannot really target one.
Did you mean "you would advise AGAINST using a cross-platform framework"? I'm considering using appcelerator.com to build cross-platform apps - have you had experience with this kind of thing and found that they don't produce the best results? –
Furnish
Sorry about the lack of a very important word, fixed. I have not used appcelerator, but I have used cross-platform frameworks on other platforms before, you simply don't end up with a product that fits in or takes full advantage of the platform as you do with a native application. You want to take every opportunity to make your app stand out and taking a shortcut like this, it's not going to happen. If you were a huge company and it didn't matter if users loved the app or not they would be fine, but a small company usually does not have that luxury. –
Supercool
Depending on what you want to do, I think you should look at web toolkits. Web apps, a.k.a. Widgets run natively on Symbian, and through Opera on many other platforms. It should be simple to port to Palm WebOS if that catches on.
You can't do everything in a Widget, but you'd be surprised what is possible.
Based on my limited experience with seeing what devices are used on subways, trains, in airports, etc - I'd suggest either Blackberry or iPhone.
But more importantly, pick a platform you like and are excited about.
If you are not enthusiastic about the platform and you are doing it solely for the money then it will show. you might as well just make hamburgers or sell lotto and cigarettes.
Take this with a pinch of salt but this pie chart seems to suggest that Symbian is the most widely used:
Or Java ?
Java is used on Blackberry's and will run on Symbian.
I wouldn't have said this 6 months ago. But I'd go with Android.
It'll be significantly more work porting in the long run. As more and more screens sizes and device profiles are coming out, but I think it's got the weakest developer market with the highest long-term potential earning power. The iPhone market is flooded, so, even if you get your app published to their catalogue, it's still almost impossible to get any kind of exposure.
Android, on the other hand, has huge growth potential and a pretty poorly followed market-place.
Verizon's massive push on the 'Droid' should open that particular device to a huge marketplace. It remains to be seen, however, if and how they'll allow 3rd parties to publish apps to their catalog.
I'm smelling a lot of "if" coming off of that plan. –
Supercool
Lots of 'if' in there for sure. Android is unproven, but that's exactly what makes it as compelling as it is. –
Pellicle
Depending on your timeline, you might also consider Flash as a cross-platform option. Here's a list of heavy-hitter companies working to make mobile Flash happen in the near future (includes Google, RIM, Nokia, Sony Ericcson, Palm, Motorola, Samsung, etc.):
http://www.openscreenproject.org/partners/current_partners.html
...a video of some of their CEOs...
http://www.openscreenproject.org/about/
...and how to apply for some of the $10MM that Adobe's seeding into the market: http://www.openscreenproject.org/developers/get_started.html
In summary, I'd suggest going for a cross-platform approach.
Symbian has by far the biggest number of users and has the largest choice for programming languages.
Symbian and Maemo will be running Qt in the near future, as well as supporting open python, open C, java etc etc etc.... (they also both have the Qt libraries available now)
I wouldn't put too many eggs in the iPhone basket. Your application would have to be monumentally good to be found and paid for by a significant number of people in the 100,000 items in their app store.
Android, don't really know anything about it. It seems like it could be a popular platform, its at least a real multi-tasking environment (unlike iPhone from app dev point of view).
Palm Web OS is insignificant at this time.
Perhaps the best solution in fact is to make your application web-based then you can just develop small apps which hook in to the web service?
Mono sounds interesting to me
Like phonegap there is appcelerator titanium
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