There’s been a very interesting phenomenon in the mobile world lately, a phenomenon that we’re following very closely in the context of TagSpot development: mobile platforms are converging.
A few years ago, most mobile phone manufacturers developed their own in-house mobile operating systems and the only way to expand the capabilities of those devices was to use semi-portable technologies such as Java.
That was until Nokia invested a lot of effort in the Symbian operating system that is now the platform for all of its high-end phones and smartphones and is even used by other manufacturers like Sony-Ericsson. Yet, I think it was more a way to reduce costs by reducing the software engineering cost for each phone release, at least until the iPhone came to existence
It’s not that the iPhone OS is more open or offers more possibilities for extensions, since Symbian already offers about the same level of extensibility. But the iPhone platform is so much sexier and so much more ergonomic that it forces all the actors on the market to rethink their platform strategy and focus on user experience. Because let’s face it: I’m the happy owner of a Nokia N95 8GB, the top-notch smartphone in Nokia’s line-up, and obviously they have some work to do before they can reach the same level of usability as the iPhone.
Yesterday, there was the Google I/O conference and a few demonstrations of a new mobile operating system and development platform being developed by a consortium led by Google (the Open Handset Alliance as they call it). This platform is called Android and it definitely has some amazing features.
There’s still no phone on the market based on this platform but there’s no doubt that manufacturers who don’t have an operating system that is usable enough to compete with iPhone’s will consider this option. As for Nokia, I suspect there up to something with Trolltech’s Qtopia.
So hopefully Java and custom mobile operating systems should soon be reserved to low-end devices and we should be able to offer innovative mobile services like TagSpot on really usable devices.
By the way, we are looking for iPhone and Android developers to help us develop TagSpot support for those platforms. So feel free to contact me or Eric if you are interested or if you know someone who could be.
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