App Operating System Wars

[DaveSawers]

The battle for supremacy in mobile computing operating systems has been joined. The main battleground will be in apps because that's what sells the hardware. Apps are expensive to develop so it is inevitable that there will be a shakeout in the number and variety of operating systems,

The main players are:

Apple - Out front because they are leading the way and are cool.
Android - Coming up strong with a well sorted OS and good development environment.
Windows Mobile - A late starter but also looking strong, especially after Microsoft's hook up with Nokia.
Blackberry - In deep trouble in my opinion. I think they are too small to survive and I expect them to disappear soon.
HP - Late to market with an old Palm operating system. Unlikely to make an impact.

I have ported my iPhone unit conversion app to both Android and Windows Mobile. Both were pretty easy to manage and a lot simpler than the development of the original Apple version. I tried to port it to Blackberry too but I just could not get the development tools to run reliably. For me, this failure just confirms RIMs failure to look after their app developers.

So who will win the war? My guess is Apple and either Google (Android) or Microsoft (Windows). I don't think that ultimately there's room for three big players.

[DaveSawers]

Interesting development in the war today with the announcement that there have been thousands of downloads of virus infected apps on Android phones. See for example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12633923

Does this mean Android is winning the war because they've attracted the ultimate accolade of being thought the one to write viruses for? Or does it just mean that Android is riddled with security issues and that this will turn people off their systems until they tighten things up?

I've now written apps for Apple, Android and Windows Mobile. Whilst not liking the bureaucratic nightmare of submitting to either Apple or Microsoft, I was none the less amazed at how easy it is to get apps onto the Android marketplace and how easy it would be to get malicious code out there.

[kgun]

So who will win the war? My guess is Apple ...

My guess is Apple, because they sell one of the best computers in the World and because the iPhone and the iPad is compatible with that computer and its software and SDK.

Does this mean Android is winning the war because they've attracted the ultimate accolade of being thought the one to write viruses for?

I personally don't think so.

Does this mean Android is winning the war because they've attracted the ultimate accolade of being thought the one to write viruses for? Or does it just mean that Android is riddled with security issues and that this will turn people off their systems until they tighten things up?

Because iPhone is an always-connected-mobile device that uses other companies' wireless infrastructure, Apple has had to place far more restriction on iPhone developers than it ever has on Mac developers who are able to write and distribute programs with absolutely no oversight or approval from Apple.

Apple has not added restrictions to be mean, but rather is trying to minimize the chances of malicious or poorly written programs being distributed that could degrade performance on the shared network.

Source: Beginning iPhone 3 Development page 4

Latest version: http://www.iphonedevbook.com/

My bolding above.

Conclusion: Apple has made it difficult to spam and scam the http://store.apple.com/us with bad code.

[steveschmidt85]

Whatever you talk about Android it's currently holding more than 50% smartphone market share which is enough to show the Android OS supremacy. But it dose not mean the Apple is losing. They both have great market share and both are growing in the market.

[DaveSawers]

The operating system might not matter much soon as more and more apps are developed using HTML5.

[kgun]

The operating system might not matter much soon as more and more apps are developed using HTML5.

And you can build native applications with PhoneGap owned by Adobe. Take a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABS_jjNDX7Y

Longer more thorough videos about PhoneGap:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXf1zyKQ5Hw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t95KG_SFppU

[DaveSawers]

That is really neat! Thanks for the links. I'm going to look further into that.

The only remaining thing to do now of course is try and persuade Apple that apps built this way should be allowed on iTunes. Somehow I can't see that happening yet.

[kgun]

I look forward to the next features of DW. I assume that open standards will win. It is very easy to stream videos with tools delivered by http://www.wevideo.com/. Then see how easy it is to insert html5 video by using DW CS 6:

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-drea...g-html5-video/

You only have to care about one format. DW take care of the tagging for the other formats.

A fast introduction to what is new in DW CS 6: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/cs6-creati...eamweaver-cs6/

You know that one of my favourite platforms are http://www.embarcadero.com/ RAD Studio XE. Embarcadero uses PhoneGap to build cross platform applications. I have seen how it is done on different seminars here in Norway.

I am even more impressed by what is possible in DW CS 6.