January 28th, 2011
Two days ago I wrote about the opportunities for Android in the enterprise. Related to this, PWC have a new free report ‘Unleashing enterprise mobility (pdf)’ that examines how smartphone provide more opportunities for enterprises than might be obvious at first glance.
The report includes some great articles and interviews including ‘Turning handheld power into enterprise clout’, ‘Getting to your best mobile strategy’, ‘Mobile technology’s journey from peril to promise’, ‘Blending work and life on smartphones’ and ‘How to exert leadership on enterprise mobility’ as well as a breakdown of current Mobile device management products.
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Posted in Mobile
January 27th, 2011
BGR has a rumour that RIM is considering using Android’s Dalvik JAVA virtual machine on its forthcoming QNX tablets and smartphones. This ties in well with a post I wrote in 2008 when I considered if Dalvik was the new Java.
Since I wrote that post Oracle has acquired Sun and hence Java ME/J2SE. My thought now is that phone and tablet makers are much more likely to consider Dalvik now that Oracle controls non-Dalvik Java.
Going back to the rumour, I think this might be too large a step for RIM because, unless they included both their own Java ME JVM and Dalvik, resultant devices wouldn’t be able to run older BlackBerry apps. This would alienate some existing users and developers. On the plus side, users of the new devices might have access to a larger number of apps and RIM might gain access to a larger developer community.
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Posted in Mobile, Android, BlackBerry
January 26th, 2011
The Forrester blog has some numbers on which mobile operating system (US) enterprises are supporting and how this is changing over time.
While BlackBerry and Windows Mobile top the list, both iOS and Android are seeing significant growth. Android growth is particularly strong up 11% from 2% to 13%.
Now that Windows Phone 7 has a more consumer rather than enterprise focus, I expect companies to trade what was Windows Mobile for new Android devices. Compared to iOS, Android devices are less expensive and allow enterprises to roll out applications with fewer restrictions.
I see Android in the enterprise and B2B apps as an area of strong opportunity for developers. There are opportunities in custom work, white label apps as well as standard apps. The difference with enterprise apps as opposed to consumer apps is that you have someone who is willing to pay and therefore, from a developer viewpoint, it’s a more profitable proposition.
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Posted in Mobile, Android
January 25th, 2011
Latest comScore research shows that mobile email usage is on the rise. In just one year,users of email have increased by 36 percent.
This made me think about several projects I came across last year where the client had decided they wanted a mobile app primarily to alert the user when something had happened. In actual fact, we determined that use of an app was overkill and simple email was all that was required.
Email is already optimised on phones for ‘push’ and doesn’t need implementation of any of the Android, iOS, Nokia or BlackBerry notification schemes. Email is also available on most non-smartphones so has more reach. Email also beats SMS on price and doesn’t have length limitations.
Email is easy, free and cross platform. Consider it as part of your mobile solution.
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Posted in Mobile
January 24th, 2011
Last week Nokia released Qt SDK 1.1 Technology Preview. This is a very important milestone for Nokia. This is the first release that allows developers to a) Use deeper Qt Mobility APIs to access phone features b) Easily create QML apps for Symbian. Previously, this required a lot of patience, luck and black magic to get working by combining and building separately released components. You still can’t ship apps because it’s a pre-production SDK and the respective Qt runtime isn’t available to end user users yet. However, once the final version of this SDK ships, developers will be able to ship Qt QML apps (that also integrate deeper into phone features) for the very first time.
QML is significant because it greatly simplifies development compared to Symbian. It also provides a bridge to Meego in that once MeeGo devices ship, Qt QML apps we be able to be re-built for MeeGo.
For early adopters such as myself the development documentation and QML development community is young and it can take a while to know how best to go about some common tasks. Also, there are still some elements of QML that are missing and need workarounds. It’s for this reason I have started a ‘Qt QML Tips‘ page to gather some tips I have discovered.
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Posted in Mobile, Qt
January 21st, 2011
The Harvard Business Review has a small article by Eric Schmidt (of Google), explaining Google’s priorities for ‘Preparing for the Big Mobile Revolution’.
They are…
- Developing the underlying fast networks
- Development of mobile money
- Availability of inexpensive smartphones in the poorest parts of the world
As a developer, the last item interests me the most because, while it’s doing something philanthropic, it will also seriously impact all parts of the world - not just the poorest. If smartphones end up in everyone’s hands and it’s Android underneath then Android might become as ubiquitous as the Windows is on the desktop.
If Google is successful, iPhone, Symbian, Windows Phone and BlackBerry might become operating systems that are used on niche products. Maybe the makers of phones based on these operating systems should start thinking about specialising rather than generalising their offerings so as to have some unique selling proposition.
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Posted in Mobile, Android
January 20th, 2011
There’s an interesting article at the GSMA on "The benefits of native versus web apps". Although the article mentions little about the ‘benefits’, it talks more about how apps are becoming more popular than the web…
"Native apps are already capturing 50 percent of all data volume, stealing share from the web browser"
We are told that…
"App stores have radically changed the way of downloading and using applications"
More specifically, I think app stores have provided an incentive for developers to develop for mobile. Making money and/or being discovered is a powerful pull. The ironic thing is that with so many apps, their price is tending towards zero and the chance of being discovered is also becoming smaller and smaller.
However, there’s no reason why web apps couldn’t be sold via a ‘web app store’. A simple username/password authentication scheme and usage tracking to prevent sharing of authenication details, might allow apps to be ’sold’. I think there might be opportunities for a third party to create an ‘web app store’ for cross platform web apps.
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Posted in WAP, Mobile
