subject: Connecting With Social Mobile Applications [print this page] For businesses the challenge of picking a mobile platform for products can be a daunting task. The mobile space is fragmented and continues to rapidly evolve. For a company to bring a mobile application to the smartphone masses then they need to consider iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Phone 7.
The jury is still out on how well Windows Phone 7 will be adopted, but Microsoft has proved very resilient with other products such as the XBox in the past, and it will be interesting to watch the growth and adoption of the Windows Phone 7 platform.
Blackberry phones still have significant corporate market share, but we are noticing a decline as more users seem to be switching to Android or iPhone devices.
iPhone and Android are currently very clear leaders in the smartphone business and they should be the minimum two platforms on any company's attempt to reach the majority of users in the smartphone market. The challenge for businesses is that each device has its own different native programming language. For example, Android uses the Java programming language, iPhone uses Objective-C, Windows Phone 7 uses .NET, and Blackberry uses Java. This causes additional challenges for businesses wanting to connect with users as they need to have experienced development teams for each of the platforms.
Beyond the code there are the different user interface guidelines that developers need to consider. For example, on the iPhone a developer may add a toolbar of buttons for various actions. However, on the Android device their is a dedicated menu button on the device that can be used to display options to the user. Additionally, the iPhone has a standard screen size, but Android devices can have different screen sizes on various devices.
