It has been an important year for smartphone OS developers. With fierce competition from the iPhone and Google’s Android, the traditional players in the market have held conferences in an attempt to retain and attract developers to their platforms. BlackBerry was one of the pioneering companies with regards to smartphone becoming an essential need for business users. However, the primary concern for most developers during this conference was the direction that RIM was taking to promote the BlackBerry conference.
A majority of the talks held by senior developers focused on the overall experience of BlackBerry’s App World and the ability to successfully publish apps on the BlackBerry platform. Alongside the overall app development process, many experts were specifically focusing on the relevant technologies that were needed for developing and coding apps.
BlackBerry’s platform is meant to be cross-platform compatible; however, issues with the Java focus do occur. Java’s inherent problem is that the number of versions available means that the coding must reflect each version. Resultantly, some apps may not work on selected hardware; this means that developers have to re-code for older sets, etc.
RIM is a company known for its BlackBerry product and service that business professionals all over the world rely on to keep in touch with their business operations. However, the attitude taken towards the development of its OS is rather restrictive in nature. RIM does not let developers easily access their SDK while most of the app development for BlackBerry happens in a J2E environment. This situation does not assist in specific app development since there are significant problems porting apps to phones that have varying screen sizes and require changes in icons, etc. Considering that many platforms encourage and support porting of apps; BlackBerry has been limiting the development of apps in this dimension.
This limited growth potential for app development is what has been holding the BlackBerry app development from gaining significant impetus in comparison to the unbridled growth in the iPhone and Android platforms. Resultantly, BlackBerry has realized the growth potential of both these platforms will overshadow their own platform. In response to the looming threat of the iPhone and Android platforms, BlackBerry is hosting a developer’s conference in November in an effort to generate interest in the platform.
The nature of J2E is focused and touted as being cross-platform friendly; the BlackBerry OS is not cross-platform friendly and has caused numerous developers to shift to other app development platforms.
RIM’s BlackBerry product and service is well known amongst business professionals all over the world. The limited growth potential for app development is what has been holding the BlackBerry app development from gaining significant impetus in comparison to the unbridled growth in the iPhone and Android platforms. Resultantly, BlackBerry has realized the growth potential of both these platforms will overshadow their own platform. In response to the looming threat of the iPhone and Android platforms, BlackBerry is hosting a developer’s conference in November in an effort to generate interest in the platform.
The primary areas of focus for BlackBerry will be to provide a unified cohesive development experience. They are pushing for various developers – ranging from .Net to Java – to attend the conference in November and encouraging app development firms to actively participate in the conference. Considering the massive potential growth of Android, the iPhone’s current success along with Palm’s webOS also beginning to show signs of life, BlackBerry seems to have realized that they need to generate interest in their platform to ensure sustainable competiveness amongst other platforms.
One of the many things that BlackBerry plans on releasing to the developers is improved support for BlackBerry Widgets that will be HTML and CSS enabled. This allows developers to create improved social media networking tools along with business productivity apps to help users fully utilize their BlackBerry devices. The improved access to the BlackBerry OS along with deeper access to device functionality will help developers improve the overall app integration for users.
In addition to this, the conference also plans on focusing on the BlackBerry Storm 2 release – a device touted as being a potential iPhone challenger – and its related development. The BlackBerry Storm 2 addresses issues that were present in the original device through improved support and software functionality. With serious app development beginning on the BlackBerry OS, the Storm 2’s improved Wi-Fi connectivity is what will drive improved app development. However, the key focus will remain on the BlackBerry OS and providing a more integrated and user-friendly experience for developers.
Palm WebOS Development Conference in December 2009
Working overtime to push their smartphone OS into the open market, Palm has decided to organize a conference in December 2009 in an effort to lure developers to its platform and begin developing apps to market on their Open Catalog e-commerce program. A key development of this conference will ultimately be how Palm decides to charge developers and provide a business structure acceptable to all parties concerned. Palm has stated that,
“(It) will offer developers choices for getting their applications to market, as well as a transparency into the process that will help them promote and grow their businesses.” – eWeek
Previously the apps offered at the store were free, however, realizing that the iPhone OS along with Android and RIM’s BlackBerry OS were quickly gaining ground over webOS; Palm decided to increase its marketing and get support for webOS. Currently, Palm’s store had apps for free in their app store, which was a reason for some of the excellent home-brew apps that were available to customers. Secondly, Palm’s strategic decision seems to be changing; currently the webOS was only available on the Pre and the Pixi. Unfortunately the problem with luring developers now is that the profitability factor of the Pre is compromised.
Already Apple has created a competitive situation where it has successfully captured a number of developers. By allowing developers to keep 70% of the profit margin by taking a 30% royalty along with a $99 developer fee, Apple has created a very strong incentive for developers to move to their platform – (Source). Since the success of the app along with the overall marketing push of the app is from the developer side, most of the work is done by the developer and by letting developers retain profits; they market their app themselves. Currently, Nokia, RIM, Symbian, Qualcomm all charge heavily for developers to access their OSs’ and SDKs’; in comparison to the structure offered by Apple, they are rather draconian in nature.
Apple’s commitment to quality is reflected via the total control they exercise over the submission and review of apps. Not only do they maintain a standard for apps, but similar to any licensing authority, they have the ability to screen out potentially malicious developers who could exploit the iPhone SDK and OS. In retrospect, this is probably why there have been very few security breaches on the iPhone while other developers have used financial clout to screen developers. Although in the long run, it will become difficult to screen what could be potentially millions of apps, it will at least ensure that apps available for download are safe.
Coming back to Palm, they are in a key situation where they can clearly see how draconian approaches will result in poor support for webOS or could help lure developers away from a fairly crowded market into a lucrative business venture. This is dependent on two things:
1.Palm creating a development program that provides a similar incentive to Apple’s program while streamlining the overall development process,
2.Marketing the Pre more aggressively and ensuring that consumers start to realize the full potential of the phone.
Although the Pre is exclusive to Sprint’s network, recently Verizon and Google have teamed up to launch Android compatible phones on Verizon’s network. The Pre has some serious competition now in terms of AT&T’s and iPhone alliance along with the Google-Verizon collaboration. It seems like that the Palm team is at a crossroads, a careful long-term strategic decision here can definitely change the path of the Pre and Palm’s profitability or it could doom the Pre to the depths of obscurity.
What do you think? Will Palm emulate Apple’s current market structure or will it follow the routes of RIM, Symbian and Nokia? Leave your thoughts and comments below.
Flash has been the bane of many software developers and hardware engineers, an inherently resource intensive program along with a rather difficult technology to master, it has become the darling child of the Internet. It has acquired the status of a necessary evil in Web development. The ease and multitude of options available in Flash programming let developers program with relative impunity while hardware specialists scream at the resource intensive nature of Flash.
Regardless, of the benefits and disadvantages of Flash, Adobe has announced full support for all smartphones. This is an important update for iPhone users who have not had Flash support for certain applications leaving them locked out of a total user experience on their iPhones. Joining the fray is Google’s Android platform along with webOS for Palm and RIM’s OS for BlackBerry’s.
However, a recent change of mind in the hearts of Apple seems to have lead to the fact that there will be no Flash support for the iPhone. Some individuals are quite happy with the lack of Flash support since it will stop the Flash based ads from appearing in certain apps, however, it still does lock out a total user experience on the overall web experience.
“Adobe and Research In Motion announced a joint collaboration to bring Flash Player to BlackBerry smartphones, and Google joined close to 50 other industry players in the Open Screen Project (OSP) initiative.”
Again, an important development in this scenario is the backing of Adobe to bring Flash to RIM. Used extensively by business professionals, it has come as a welcome addition for some of the developers who have wanted to use the BlackBerry OS as a development platform.
One of the major upsides of this new update are cellphone manufacturers who plan to release a slew of phones before the holiday season. Motorola and Nokia both have high-end phones coming out that allow Flash based support such as the Cliq, N-series and E-series. This will be a major help in boosting sales of phones during this holiday season which promises to be a good sign of recovery for the world economy.
Apple’s refusal to allow Flash support on its phones may be a critical issue considering that the appeal of the iPhone slowly starting to saturate and the availability of cheaper and more appealing phones. Motorola and HTC are offering phones that are significantly more powerful and open sourced in comparison to iPhones. Google’s business direction seems to be challenging iPhone directly with more powerful phones and a strategic decision to collaborate with Verizon to provide high-end quality phones to CDMA customers. Again, the CDMA market does not have the option of the iPhone, however, Google’s Android compatible phones are being pushed on to the Verizon network which has an extremely loyal customer base and fairly reliable perception amongst consumers. AT&T is already facing a slew of problems with regards to reliability when receiving calls on the iPhone. Google’s Android platform may receive the much needed boost that it wants and needs to become the next dominant smartphone OS.
What do you think? Will Flash dictate consumer choices? Will Apple’s decision haunt them as time progresses? Leave your comment and thoughts below.
