Mobile Application Development

The world of smart phones totally changed the way we live, as we constantly have a mini computer in our pockets. Several sizes, form factors and platforms are available and choosing your smart phone is certainly not easy, unless you are either a brainwashed Apple fan. The most common OSs for mobile phones are Android (36.9%), iOS (28.5%), RIM (18.1%) and Symbian (13.1%). Bada, WinMobile and Windows Phone 7 occupy the rest (3.4%).

Figure 1: Top Mobile Operating Systems

Figure 2: Operating Systems in Comparison (January 2012)

Figure 3: Smart Phone Manufacturer Comparison

One Application, 5 Operating Systems

Deciding on which platform to start developing can be tricky. There are an unlimited number of devices out there to cater for all but sticking to just one platform many times is not good enough. Thank god for PhoneGap, Appcelerator Titanium and Rhodes.

Android developers use Java to build applications for Android devices. iOS developers use Objective-C to develop applications for iPhones and iPADs. Immediately we can see that the code is not interchangeable since a different language is used. Also, learning Java and Objective-C has a steep learning curve. How about using JavaScript, CSS3 and HTML5 instead. These three applications allow you to create an application using JavaScript (or JQuery), CSS3 and HTML5. These technologies are very fast and also quite easy to use.

Figure 4: Appcelerator Titanium, PhoneGap and Rhodes

How is it done?

PhoneGap allows the developer to build applications once using web standards. Then, using PhoneGap, a mobile developer can get access to native APIs and then allows the developer to deploy to as many devices as he wants. Appcelerator uses nearly the same cycle. However, Rhodes makes use of Ruby to create the applications, rather than the other web technologies. This makes Rhodes less popular as there are a smaller number of developers using Ruby than the other languages.

Android Market vs AppStore

These two are the location people use to download applications for Android and IOS respectively. It turns out that although Android owns more than 50% of total smartphone market share, developers have, thus far, been reluctant to flock to the Android platform with their apps. In fact, there are more than 4 times as many iOS developers as there are Android developers. Why, you may ask? Quite simply, developers have long known that Apple device owners are closely locked into the Apple ecosystem, with credit cards on file. Many a study has been done, and the results are unanimous – Apple device owners are more willing to pay for apps. That being said, there are many apps in the Google Play Store that are also on Apple’s App Store – but are free, or ad supported.

Downloads and Fragmentation

The most frustration for developers on the Android platform has come from one evil word, which is fragmentation. As noted in the image above, thanks to The Next Web, iOS versions are adopted much faster and in far higher numbers than any recent version of Android. Ice Cream Sandwich, however,  still has not passed the 3% mark of all Android devices. Furthermore, according to GigaOm, 45% of iPhone and iPod Touch users purchased at least one paid app every month. Only 19% of Android users bought a paid app every month. In addition, iOS users almost double Android users in the total number of apps downloaded per month.

Figure 5: Fragmentation

Conclusion

In the end, this war between Android and IOS will never be over and it will never be a seamless job to produce apps for both Android and IOS. It is still a matter of personal taste and what the developer wants to achieve with the application he or she is going to develop