J2ME VS Android VS iPhone VS Symbian VS Windows CE [closed]

Answer 1

RE: Is there any IDE, debugging facilities?

For Android development the best option is to use MOTODEV Studio, based on Eclipse platform. Is an integrated development environment with Eclipse 3.5 and Android Development Tools (ADT) plus automatic download and configuration of the latest Android SDK. You can also test applications on an integrated Android emulator within it.

Answer 2

A detailed market research about Android and iPhone here

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

Answer 3

You can also take a look at iSpectrum . With this you can code in Java for iPhone, so you can reuse a lot of your code produced for Android and/or J2ME, for example.

Answer 4

There's several of these questions floating around on SO already... the most popular seems to be this one: what mobile platform should I start learning?

Quicky from the accepted answer over there (I edited a bit):

I think 3-4 platform have a future. But depends what platform do you like and how you like freedom in distribute your applications :)

1. Windows Mobile
   • C++ or .NET
   • free distribution, just like normal applications or through market
   • You need a Windows PC to develop
   • proprietary
2. Android
   • Java
   • Open Source
   • through Android Market ($25 one-time fees) or like normal applications
   • The platform is completely open source
3. iPhone
   • Objective-C or Java (Developing iPhone Applications using Java)
   • through iPhone Market ($99/year fees)
   • You need Mac (Mac OS) for development
   • proprietary
4. Java
   • J2ME or JavaFX
   • largely open source

My personal thoughts are: Symbian's dead; Windows Mobile will die, but take a long time; Android will become the standard in the next few years; iPhone will remain trendy in coming years, but NOT take be the biggest player; Pre/WebOS will maintain a niche market, but not be wildly sucessfull, Blackberry will decline, but still be around forever. I'd probably put my time/money into Android or iPhone at this point.

Answer 5

Java ME has the Java Verified Program and the Specs all come from the Java Community Process (JCP) far more advanced and vendor neutral than the others.

Answer 6

Admittedly I'm biased, but points in favor of Symbian are:

• Is open source
• Has by far the largest marketshare (45% or so) of smartphones
• Runs on cheaper hardware than Android and iPhone (means volumes will go up significantly faster)
• Runs Python, Ruby, Java and Web Runtime Widgets
• From Symbian^4 will have a complete Qt stack.