challenges of mobile complexity

While mobile developers tell us all the time about their challenges creating rich native applications for dizzying array of smartphone operating systems out there today, the phenomenon seems remarkably underreported in the wider information technology press. This article by former PC Magazine editor Michael J. Miller sums it up well. I especially liked the way that he politely dismissed the “lets just create mobile websites for it all” approach put forth by one vendor.

Further detail on the problem of mobile operating system fragmentation for developers is provided by Information Week’s David Berlind. There is perhaps a bit of blurring between device operating systems and crossplatform development “platforms” (like Rhodes) that could be confusing. That said, I don’t see either FlashLite or JavaFX as competitive with Rhodes. Rhodes is a full application framework (backend to frontend, that is full MVC), concentrates on unique device capabilities and access to local data. Still, given what we hear from developers trying to mobilize their apps and data, it would be great to see more coverage of such options for mobile developers regardless in the traditional information technology press.

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smartphones under $100

Refurbished iPhones are now available for under $100. With the iPhone at $199, the Google G1 at $179 and various Windows Mobile devices such as the Blackjack II available for less, you assume that its just a matter of months before the standard is under $100. We would guess that this means yet another acceleration of smartphone adoption. The 28% year over year growth in smartphone shipments of the third quarter of this year might actually be lower than we see next year. This may result in the dynamic that we see in other markets (Asia and Europe) of a very large segment of people where the smartphone is the primary Internet device, something that hasn’t quite emerged yet in the US. We think, especially with the rise of interesting device capabilities such as GPS, accelerometer and proximity detection, that this will spur a whole new class of applications for mobile devices, far beyond email and web browsing.

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the end of the OS

InfoWorld’s Neil McAllister comments on the recent trend of Rich Internet Application platforms such as Adobe Air and JavaFX making the operating system irrelevant. This is certainly happening for desktop applications. It hasn’t quite happened yet for mobile device operating systems, yet with five major mobile device operating systems the need is so much greater. We think that Rhodes may be the best shot at that happening for mobile devices. J2ME as a way to program once for multiple device operating systems, except for limited niches in mobile gaming, seems to have been dead from the start. Are there other alternatives?

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Nokia provides more validation of the “local mobile web server” approach

Was very pleased to Nokia releases final Mobile Web Server Beta. This is effectively a final release of currently planned features – i.e. they are “done” for now. Great stuff.

Of course the “local mobile web server” is the approach that Rhodes takes, but of course we offer it on all smartphone platforms. Its a great way to let you write your app functionality to run on your device, but all in HTML. So if you want to take advantage of this kind of capability on non-Nokia Series 60 devices, take a look at Rhodes.

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iPhone as a business tool

As reported by Clint Boulton in eWeek, Forrester Research published a report recent that says that iPhone penetration will reach 10% in Small to Medium Businesses. This contradicts some pundits who dismiss the iPhone as a business tool. If you’re an enterprise app developer its hard to still keep ignoring the iPhone.

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Consumer Reports publishes top smartphones – operating system diversity is here to stay

As reported by IntoMobile, Consumer Reports just released their top rated smartphones:

1. Samsung Blackjack II (AT&T) – score: 69 (out of 100)
2. T-Mobile Wing – score: 66
3. Motorola Q 9c (Verizon) – score: 65
4. T-Mobile Shadow – score: 65
5. Pantech Duo (AT&T) – score: 63
6. AT&T Tilt – score: 62
7. Palm Centro 685 (AT&T) – score: 61
8. Palm Treo 800 (Sprint-Nextel) – score: 61
9. Palm Treo 577P (Sprint-Nextel) – score: 61
10. Apple iPhone 3G (8GB) (AT&T) – score: 61

The list may seem a bit surprising. Despite excitement about iPhone and Android, Windows Mobile devices did very well, with the Blackjack II topping the list. Apparently the HTC (AT&T) Fuze (very similar to the HTC Touch Diamond) didn’t quite get released in time to be reviewed. That’s too bad – its a fantastic device. In general it’s clear that it’s still at least a five platform market for smartphones: Windows Mobile, Blackberry, iPhone, Android and Symbian. Plus, with the strength of these Palm devices, if they do a good job on their new operating system Nova and associated device updates, they will still be a contender. Wow, six device operating systems. Is there any other way to be a mobile app developer without a crossplatform toolkit?

For what its worth here are our favorite devices in various categories:

• best overall multipurpose device: HTC Fuze.
  This was an easy choice. It has a great keyboard (better than the G1 even), fast processor, and is extremely small and lightweight

• best for phone and camera: Nokia N95.
  This is still the best phone Nokia makes, has voice quality and usability for voicecalls, and is replete with highend options. It is a faster device than the Nokia N96. When the Nokia N97 comes out that will probably win these first two categories

• best for web browsing, music and consumer apps: Apple iPhone 3G
  Love the iPhone for surfing, listening to music app and all those great apps on the iPhone store. It’s still a little awkward as a voice phone. And, despite becoming reasonably adept at the soft keyboard, I wouldn’t want to be away on a trip without my laptop and only be able to send emails with this device.

This is a fairly arbitrary category list I guess. Like many other people I find that I carry multiple devices most of the time. These three devices are my stalwarts and I find that I use them all the time and no single one of them is best at each. For me it’s validation that the mobile device market market will continue to be fragmented, er, diverse.

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AGPL becoming acceptable to software developers?

There’s a recent article/interview on Linux.com with Funambol’s CEO about the desirability of AGPL for software that may be used by a service. For clarification the Affero Gnu Public License (AGPLv3) closes the infamous “ASP loophole” and says that just having your software embedded in a service accessed only over the Internet (e.g. embedded in web site or application) still constitutes distribution.

In the interview Fabrizio Capobianco recommends to other FOSS software creators use of this license. Makes sense as its essentially his creation deriving from their own one-off “Honest Public License”. As the creators of an enabling software platform ourselves we obviously have a bit of a bias and would be happy to see this succeed and become acceptable to software developers.

It turns out that since our core product, Rhodes, requires a download we don’t have to worry as much about the “ASP loophole” in the GPL. All apps that are written with Rhodes trigger a “distribution” under standard GPLv3 when users use them. So for our core product Rhodes, even with standard GPLv3, any mobile developer that wants to use it without open sourcing their own solution, they need to work out a commercial license with us. We feel fortunuate that GPLv3 works so well for us in this regard.

However, we have several enabling server-based services coming out: an OTA provisioning service (aka an “app vending machine”) and a device capabilities service in addition to our RhoSync sync server. Here we will have the same problem that Funambol and many other open source companies had: use of these server components by a developer in their website or service is not redistribution. That is, tese services are server-based components that facilitate developer’s mobile apps (whether or not those apps are written with Rhodes). We will have our own hosted instances of these services. But we will also allow and encourage developers to have their own instances of them. Use of our services in those situations does NOT constitute redistribution under standard GPLv3 (or GPLv2 for that matter). So if our developer customers were accepting AGPL that would be a good thing for our services. But AGPL still fairly new, and we want maximum developer adoption. So for our server-based services we will still license them under GPLv3 until we see some very prominent and widely used developer tools using AGPL.

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Even more mobile device OS diversity

Palm is expected to take the wraps off their new OS, codenamed Nova, at the CES show this week. Its not news of course that Palm is building a new OS. What IS news is that details are going to be presented so soon. As mentioned, mobile operating systems continue to diversify at a dizzying rate.

We’ve said in the past that we have no plans to support Palm or LiMo operating systems with Rhodes. We didn’t mean anything new that Palm would do. We’ll take a close look at Nova as details become available, and support it if it makes sense to do so. My guess is that it will.

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Where are all the Android apps?

Venture Beat had an interesting article asking where all Android apps are? I think its not such a mystery and its not a huge indictment of Android. There are five major smartphone operating systems with a future: iPhone, RIM, Windows Mobile, Android and Symbian (notice I didn’t mention Palm or LiMo).

If you’re an mobile app developer you can afford to target all of them (when it was two or three you perhaps might have tried). Android easily falls off the priority list for every mobile app developer I’ve talked to. With a platform like Rhomobile (are there others?) you can write it and target primarily iPhone and Blackberries for volume, but still get Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian.

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More me too Android phones

At Rhomobile we love device diversity (what others call “fragmentation”). So we’re rooting for Android. It was a big disappointment to me that the G1 is pretty much an inferior product (at least from the perspective of hardware and specs) to other devices with similar form factors, such as the AT&T HTC Fuze, running Windows Mobile.

Well the second Android phone has been announced, the Kogan Agora. Unfortunately its also a bit derivative. Actually I don’t agree with the Read Write Web article that its similar to a Blackberry. It looks just like a Blackjack for me. And the base version is $299 with no Wifi and a 2 megapixel camera Its hard to see what’s special about this device except that its running Android. Looking forward to a cutting edge and innovative to be released on Android some day.

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