Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Yahoo Go: because we all love SDKs
If you are a mobile developer, you are already a frustrated individual. You dream of a world with one mobile operating system and one SDK (wait, are you sure, take a look at what you have in front of you...), instead Yahoo at CES has just announced yet-another-mobile-SDK.Damn, can't life in mobile be easier?
If you want to build a mobile app today, you can choose from:
- JavaME: great reach but you need to develop one app per phone, so that's about one billion slightly different apps... But just slightly.
- Symbian: not a bad idea, big reach, stable platform, maybe boring. I could even build a JavaME app and tweak it to become native.
- Windows Mobile: very small market share and not growing, but easy to build. Tough, who wants to build for a Microsoft operating system? Really uncool... If my boss forced me to do it, I will. But please boss do not force me to do it.
- iPhone: that would be cool, the thing attracts girls and its market share will boom fast (although the device is not really robust). Wait, I have to hack it and there are no APIs. Even cooler! It might get boring when they announce the SDK in February, though...
- Android: whooo!! supercool. Too bad there are no devices and it will take a few years for it to have a meaningful marketplace. Hey, but you can get money from Google with the Android Challenge...
- BREW: what? No, please. I do not want to develop in a box with high walls.
- PalmOS: is it still alive?
- Flash: nice, but it is ready for prime time? It could actually be the answer to JavaME portability in the long run. Wait and see.
- A dozen variations of Linux, lead by OpenMoko (because I like them), including Maemo and many others: go for it, man! We need people that love to dream in this world! Worst case scenario: you'll port it back to Android in a year. It is a mobile Linux variation, after all.
- Another ten or so I forgot, like Sony PSP and many more
The issue? Well, a mobile platform over an operating system might be a bit large in size and slow as hell. Hey, you can always hope in Moore's law.
The opportunity? Well, they already ported their platform over the other operating systems. If they make it really consistent (doable), you develop once and it will run everywhere. That's a developer dream.
The risk? Well, for your app to succeed, you need the underlying technology to succeed. If people do not download Yahoo Go on their phone because it is too large and too slow, you are toasted. Uuhhmmm.
Overall, I like Yahoo's move.
They needed to come up with something (anything ;-) to counter Google and Apple. They did it.
I am a fan of the mobile widget concept, as you might remember. In one of my first posts on this blog, I mentioned Yahoo going for WAP but my prediction was they would go back to mobile widgets one day. They did it.
Now they just have to make sure consumers love the platform and developers build the widgets. The problem is that the two are linked. One drives the other. And getting developers mind share in mobile is very very hard these days...
Good! Luck! To! Yahoo!
Posted by Fabrizio at 12:07
3 Comments:
Hi, i might need your expert advices. I am new to mobile programming. My final year project title is health management and fitness monitoring using mobile application. So i don't know how to do it.Is it that creating mobile application is better than mobile WEB application. If it is can you recommend what sorts of programming tools i will be needed. Thanks.
Comment Posted at 00:50
Fabrizio said...
Hi Teena,
it really depends on what the application will do. If there is a lot of data on the application, you might be better off with a "native" app (installed on the device). If the content changes every time, a web app might be better.
If you go for a native app, pick a platform and work on it. You can choose one, depending on the target you have. Either JavaME (if it is for a wide audience) or Windows Mobile or BlackBerry (more business audience) or iPhone (cooler people ;-) or Android (geeks for now, but it is a trendy platform). Once you have chosen the platform, check the websites and you'll find all the tools you need.
You might need Funambol if you go for the native app. It will give you data synchronization, which is a key element of a native app. It allows you to focus on the application instead of thinking about how to get the data on the device.
Good luck with your development.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 16:54
sangza said...
I agree with you.
I have develope some of J2ME, Symbian, WM5 and.. what's next
I hope my life will be better than this if we reduce scope to be a widget not application.
