The other day I got involved in a conversation with some members of the mobile software engineering experts at Crisp Wireless. They were reacting to my blog post about iPhone and Android. The sentiment of the developers was that the open source community is supporting Android and developers in general prefer the more open nature when writing software. Furthermore, the iPhone SDK is limiting compared to Android and a lot of interesting application ideas require capabilities not currently included as part of the iPhone SDK and UELA. For instance, letting the application run in the background is something the developer may need.

Since Android is less limiting, then that’s better? Both to the benefit of the end-user, the mobile operator, the manufacturer and the developer, there are arguments against that. Respectively: Do we want to run concurrent applications on our phone to drain the battery as quickly as possible? Do we want an application to mess with the network when you’re in the middle of a call? Do we want to allow applications that compete with the manufacturers built-in applications? Do we want an insanely complex certification path before the applications are deemed safe enough to allow distribution?

Android is supported by the open source community, so developers must like it a lot? Well, there is no single open source community. Developers are collaborating on other mobile software projects besides Android and I would be surprised if they are willing to drop whatever has been achieved and focus instead on something that Google just kind of threw over the wall. Gnome mobile and GPE Phone Edition comes to mind. Limo Foundation is another. The point being that those new mobile platforms are great for innovation but you can’t pick just one out, build your app for it and think you’re done. Porting to many platforms is expensive and it is in the best interest of Google to realize that being a good citizen of the open source community is helping with avoiding fragmented efforts.

Some of the developers that currently have the iPhone SDK in their hands and are able to have a compelling application written by this summer can likely avoid any porting and make a good enough of a return through iTunes alone. That’s not to say they shouldn’t port their app on Android or any of the other platforms, but at the end of the day, will they still like Android better?Crisp Wireless is interested in hiring talented mobile developers to work at their offices in New York. Please send your resume to jobs@crispwireless.com

Xavier Facon | RSS 2.0 | Comment it , or trackback this post.