ReadWriteMobile

From a theoretical perspective, there is really not all that much of a difference between Windows Phone and Android. 

This is Part Two of a two-part series on Disassembling Android. 

"Android is open for disruption.” That's what Stewart Putney, CEO of the mobile gaming company Moblyng, said last August. He was talking about the potential for HTML5 Web apps to disrupt the Android Market (now Google Play), but he may have been oddly prophetic. Android has not been riding high in 2012. More than one competitor is lining up to strike a decisive blow.

The Windows Phone Marketplace is a sad, sorry place. It is a land of copycat games, worn-out titles and a plethora of apps that border on outright spam. Since the end of 2011, it has grown from about 40,000 apps to nearly 70,000, but any subjective analysis of those new apps would show that almost all of them are of poor quality. Top publishers have either abandoned Windows Phone or just do not care. With the upcoming release of the Nokia Lumia 900, can Microsoft turn developer sentiment around?

There are several things that Windows Phone has going for it. The consensus among developers is that Windows Phone is the easiest mobile platform for which to develop. Apps that are given tender loving care actually look and perform great. Too bad those apps are few and far between.

Easy, instant push notifications are a phenomenon of modern mobile technology. They deliver news, app updates, requests and prompts to users to complete an action. Mobile developers, marketers and advertisers all see push notifications as a key way to reach an audience at the most personal level: straight into their pockets.

This level of personal interaction is precisely what makes consumers not entirely trust push notifications. It is a mixed bag: They love notifications when they are useful, hate them when they become a vehicle of spam. For developers, this is a fine line. There is a fundamental disconnect between technologists and consumers when it comes to push notifications. Many developers think push is a wonderful, useful tool. Most consumers would prefer to be left alone. Developers: what do you think consumers think of push notifications? That is the subject of this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

If there were any uncertainty that Google's acquisition of Motorola would be approved by regulatory agencies across the world, one only has to look at the fourth quarter of 2011 to see why it never was in danger. The last quarter of 2011 showed us which companies really control the smartphone market and Motorola was certainly not one of them. Between Apple and Samsung, the two behemoths controlled 95% of mobile phone profits worldwide, according to Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley.

The pincer formation at the top of the ecosystem means that no regulatory agency can deny Google its $12.5 billion purchase. Life has also become extremely difficult for all the other OEMs and mobile platforms trying to make a dent in the market. If you are not making an iDevice or some type of Galaxy product, Apple and Samsung are squeezing you out of the market. The clock is ticking.

PhoneGap is turning 1.3 today. There are a plethora of new features, tools and controls across five platforms in the new PhoneGap release. Biggest among these is Windows Phone's support of all PhoneGap features, a first for any mobile platform that is not iOS or Android.

PhoneGap, which technically changed its name to Apache Callback for legal reasons, will now actually be called Apache Cordova when it releases version 1.4. It does not really matter what PhoneGap calls itself, the functionality continues to improve with each successive iteration. A full suite for Windows Phone should be a big boon to the platform as it reaches out for more developers.

The barrier for entry for creating software for computing devices has never been lower. This has a lot to do with the mobile revolution. According to a report from VisionMobile, the time to market for applications has decreased from 82 days through traditional channels to 36 days with the advent of the app store. Developers have more reasons to publish to apps stores now than ever before, with curation, distribution, billing and monetization, discovery and feedback opportunities from users higher than ever.

There are several kinds of mobile developers. There are independent software vendors, contractors, hobbyists, moonlighting engineers, entrepreneurs, in-house and B2B/B2C focused developers. The strength a given mobile platform has much to do with how many quality developers it can attract to it.

The mobile industry issues anti-malware solutions to secure popular mobile platforms almost as an afterthought. But, what is it doing to explicitly address security early on, such as with the SDKs developers use to write mobile applications? Leviathan Security Group's David Kane-Parry, who regularly presents on mobile security was kind enough to update me. I gave the top four mobile vendors opportunity to chime in as well, and some did.

It's been a busy time for the Windows Phone team at Microsoft. On Tuesday, the company announced that the highly-anticipated update to the Windows Phone mobile operating system known as "Mango" had been released to manufacturing. This is an important milestone indicating the final phase of of Mango's development.

Now developers are being offered an updated SDK to complement release: the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 "Beta 2 Refresh." And they can also download a new pre-release build of Mango onto their retail devices, too, says Microsoft.

Microsoft has announced that developers building mobile applications for its next big release of the Windows Phone operating system, code-named "Mango," will be able to submit those applications to its app marketplace starting in August. Or more specifically, August 22nd.

This news comes at the same time as a rollout of an updated developer portal is underway. The new "App Hub" will support more geographic markets, private distribution options and will offer better application and account management capabilities.