What mobile platform should I start learning? [closed]

Answer 1

You can look at my answer for a similar question:

A detailed market research about Android and iPhone here

and smart phone market share in first quarter of 2010:
_{(source: nielsen.com)}

Answer 2

For a starter point, due to your matters, the answer is J2ME

• ease: Java for J2ME is quite simple and friendly
• popularity of platform: billion of devices can run J2ME
• low cost of SDK and actual handheld: it's easy to find a cheap mobile that supports J2ME, almost all tools: framework, IDE, emulators, documents... are totally free.

Answer 3

This one is easy (even for a Windows Mobile developer like myself):

iPhone

The technology underlying the device is nothing special, but Apple has provided a convenient and reasonable mechanism for paying developers while locking down the device to the extent that software piracy is (as far as I know) totally impossible [update: or apparently just difficult]. Who wouldn't want to write software for a rapidly growing market like that?

Windows Mobile devices could have done this 6 or 7 years ago, but nooooooooooo ...

Answer 4

While looking for the answer to this question I came across the following 2 frameworks that allow development of native mobile apps from HTML5, Javascript, and CSS:

1. Adobe's PhoneGap allows you to build mobile applications for iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Palm WebOS, Bada and Symbian.
2. Appcelerator's Titanium allows you to build applications for iOS, Android, and desktops.

Other interesting features (for both):

• Both are Free and Open Source.
• Both have rich development environments
  
  • Titanium has a eclipse based dedicated IDE,
  • PhoneGap has plugins for all IDEs its targetted apps are developed on
• Both have made great effort in terms of documentation and support (video tuts and developer forum)
• You may compile your code in the cloud, if you do not have the environment on your local machine (this service is not free)

I haven't experimented with any of them yet as I am still researching on similar technologies. I suppose anyone who has tried them could enlighten 'us' on the pros and cons.
At first sight they look quite easy to learn; at least for any web developer.

My pick would be any of the two as I am interested in developing for both Android and iOS (and I admit, quite seduced by the possibility of a shorter learning curve).

Answer 5

Popularity: worldwide numbers say that Java ME is clearly ahead of everybody else. Symbian is a distant second. iPhone is an even more distant third, far far away. However, if you're targeting a continent or a country or a language, then the numbers can change dramatically.

Ease of development: Objective-C is a cool and powerful thing, but remember it is 20 years old. iPhone is easy to develop for, but Android development is just as easy, free and multi-platform. Java ME is a nightmare except if you target a very limited number of different handset models. Native Symbian OS C++ has the worse reputation in the market, but it's clawing back inch by inch, year after year. Symbian also the huge advantage of letting you choose which language you want to develop in.

Cost of tools: Java ME would be cheapest, followed by Symbian, Android then iPhone.

Other criteria: well, a lot depends on what applications you want to develop.

No mention of Palm's WebOS as it barely registers as a blip on the radar, from a commercial standpoint, at least for now.

Answer 6

Check Google for smartphones market share. Here is one from Gartner. In short, sales stats for 2008 are (sales is in thousands of units):

Operating                2008        Market          Growth
System                  Sales         Share       2007-2008
-----------------------------------------------------------
Symbian              72,933.5          52.4%           -6.1
Research In Motion   23,149.0          16.6%           96.7
MS Windows Mobile    16,498.1          11.8%           12.2
Mac OS X             11,417.5           8.2%          245.7
Linux                11,262.9           8.1%           -4.2
Palm OS               2,507.2           1.8%           42.2
Other OSs             1,519.7           1.1%           13.1
-----------------------------------------------------------
Total               139,287.9         100.0%           13.9

So, reading this, Symbian devices are biggest market. iPhone and BlackBerry are fast growing platforms. Android came on market late last year, so it's hard to say how popular would it be.
My pick would be:

1. iPhone - because it is most uniform platform - same display and keyboard, similar other features. Very popular web shop if you decide to go professional. Fast growing market share, possible number two in next year or two.
   Minus is that it requires Mac computer for development.
2. BlackBerry - relatively small number of different devices (different resolutions, different keyboards), but it complicates development because you need to take into account those factors. Second by sales number, keeps very high growth rate.
3. Symbian - by far largest number of phones, but from several different vendors (Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, Sony Erricson, ...) with number of different hardware configurations. Each vendor has its own developer program you need to join to get access to device specific SDKs.
4. Windows Mobile - still sells large number of units, very good development tools.
5. Android - ? On hold until it gains any significant market share.

Edit:
Re Mac comments:

• Cheapest Mac Mini (1 GB RAM, 120 GB HD) without mouse, keyboard and monitor cost as much as mid-range Dell or HP laptop ($599). So, minimal hardware needed for development cost at least two times more than a Windows based system. iPhone development requires more expensive equipment than any other smartphone platform. And that is a downside.

Re Symbian comments:

I know about symbian.org and the open source initiative. But:

1. The process is very slooow. It started more than 1 year ago (June 2008) and it's still beta. This is deal between very big companies and it will probably pass some time before they come to final agreement.
2. Now, if you want to develop for Symbian devices, you need to go to every vendors developer site to get access to documentation, examples, SDKs, tools ...
3. If you plan to go professional, every vendor has its own shop and set of rules that you'll need to comply.