Google's Nexus One
After little more than one year Google have announced over 5 notable Android platforms, 3 of which they strongly recommend app developers support. With all the current hype around mobile apps this is a bit of a reality check for developers hoping to keep things simple and cost effective.
Their “platform version report” can be found on the device dashboard of the Android Developers website. It shows that app developers should at least support versions 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0.1 of Android to reach 96% of customers. To further complicate things the latest range of Android phones, such as the Google Nexus One or Sony Ericsson X10 feature higher resolution screens, which app developers will need to account for in addition to the other new capabilities in version 2.1 of the platform.
But could the Nexus One phone actually help reduce fragmentation rather than making it worse? By introducing their own reference phone Google are effectively raising the bar and giving sharp focus for future Android app development. Developers will naturally tend to release apps on the Nexus One first, which will force other Android handset manufacturers to keep current in order to maintain good compatibility and market share.
Even if the Nexus One solves Android fragmentation it still doesn’t overcome the cost of developing apps across all platforms including Apple, Symbian and Microsoft. Fragmentation is a major part of developing apps for mobile today and is something that needs to be factored into the costs of developing and maintaining any mobile application. For example, to just target the Apple and Google markets an app developer should be looking to build and maintain at least 6 variants (3 each for Google and Apple). Considering these escalating platform costs and the very low sales numbers from the app stores being reported by many developers it makes it crucial to have your market accurately targeted and your business model finely mapped out.
And this is not limited to Android. Although Apple appears to do a better job of upgrading their iPhone platform by retaining tight control over the hardware even they have fragmentation – app developers already need to consider the iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G and iPod Touch. Then there is the big list of bugs resolved in each version along with changes in fonts between 2.0 and 2.1. Apple updates have tended to be bigger and less frequent but innovation has been much slower as a result.
Although you may have a big urge to dive in and develop that trendy app, the wise developers are now looking to the web – both as a way to deliver services without developing apps and as a way to directly sell the apps onto open handsets (i.e. everything except Apple). The web uses standards that work across all handsets and don’t require lengthy approvals to get live – in fact you can be set up and selling in minutes in most countries – see Bango Payment for details. Mobile browsers are getting richer with more functionality as screens get bigger, touch interfaces evolve, Javascript and AJAX work and projects like Google Gears and Bondi are standardizing Javascript APIs for browser access to on-handset services traditionally only available to an application – and even then in different ways depending on handset.
Advancing browser technology on the PC has enabled fully featured “web applications” – there is even a new version of Microsoft Office coming that will run *IN* your browser. With the accelerating pace of mobile technology, it won’t be long before mobile apps will be web based by default.
Google uncaged the best mobile platform for innovation with Android and is now whipping it into the lead position with Nexus One.
[...] else could you ask for from a mobile phone?! Ok, I know it’s not all roses, as fragmentation continues to be a major issue with Android. But if you get all these great features and with [...]
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