Which mobile programming environment do you recommend for a startup to target?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

Take this with a pinch of salt but this pie chart seems to suggest that Symbian is the most widely used:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone

Answer 3

Or Java ?

Java is used on Blackberry's and will run on Symbian.

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

Mono sounds interesting to me

Mono on Android - androidMono

Mono on Iphone

Like phonegap there is appcelerator titanium

Answer 6

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.

Answer 7

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.

Answer 8

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.

Answer 9

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.

Answer 10

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.

Answer 11

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.

Answer 12

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.

Answer 13

Windows mobile.
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Bwahahahahaha.

Answer 14

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.

Answer 15

which market are you targetting? the american market is very different to the rest of the world.

Answer 16

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%5Fpartners.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%5Fstarted.html

Answer 17

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?