Which mobile programming environment do you recommend for a startup to target? [closed]

Answer 1

I wouldn't have said this 6 months ago. But I'd go with Android.

It'll be significantly more work porting in the long run. As more and more screens sizes and device profiles are coming out, but I think it's got the weakest developer market with the highest long-term potential earning power. The iPhone market is flooded, so, even if you get your app published to their catalogue, it's still almost impossible to get any kind of exposure.

Android, on the other hand, has huge growth potential and a pretty poorly followed market-place.

Verizon's massive push on the 'Droid' should open that particular device to a huge marketplace. It remains to be seen, however, if and how they'll allow 3rd parties to publish apps to their catalog.

Answer 2

It depends on your target audience. Business users will most likely use BlackBerrys or Windows Mobile (at least in my experience). Consumers (at least those willing to pay for software) will more likely use IPhones.

Answer 3

Depending on what you want to do, I think you should look at web toolkits. Web apps, a.k.a. Widgets run natively on Symbian, and through Opera on many other platforms. It should be simple to port to Palm WebOS if that catches on.

You can't do everything in a Widget, but you'd be surprised what is possible.

Answer 4

Take this with a pinch of salt but this pie chart seems to suggest that Symbian is the most widely used:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone

Answer 5

Not Iphone. Because of Apple and this strange policy of application approuval. You could not afford to close your entreprise only because apple has decided that your application is "not ok"

Edit : For sure, the AppStore has a huge potential client base. But it's also the only "mobile market place" from where you can be removed.

Answer 6

I've written and launched two mobile apps on the iphone over the last year and both have had success in economic terms. One app is free and tied to a web service and it has a significant impact on the popularity and number of users for the web service. The second app is a paid app - and I can tell you that it is producing some actual revenue, enough that if I was a solo developer it'd be paying my bills.

That said I think that if you're launching a company for mobile products you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. So either support multiple platforms or aim to have multiple products on your main platform.

I think there is big potential in Android but at the moment it is totally unproven as a platform where you can actually make money (please point out some info on this if you have any I am really curious about the economic potential of Android).

Blackberry is also interesting since pretty much everyone I know who's under 25 has one, but it is a platform where selling apps doesn't seem to have caught on that well. I've discussed it with some heavy blackberry users and apps are not something they really care that much about. So you'd want to try to find out some numbers regarding Blackberry app sales.

In the end it depends on your target market/product.

Are you building an enterprise targeted mobile app? - Build for Blackberry first and perhaps iPhone next.

Do you want to launch one consumer focused mobile app with a large feature set and perhaps some web service integration? - target a few platforms and make it available to as many users as possible.

Are you trying to build a series of small purpose built apps? - Definitely start with iPhone and get some revenue first.

My 2 cents.