In the Beginning

When handheld computers went mainstream, developers had only one choice: Palm Pilot. Within five years, they had Symbian and Pocket PC (later Windows Mobile) to consider also. By 2009, there were no less than eight major operating systems for smartphones: two versions of Windows Mobile, two versions for Blackberry, iPhone, Android, Symbian, and webOS, not to mention traditional feature phones running various flavors of Java.

The Impact

Developers were forced to make the tough choice of which operating system to develop for. Making it harder, customers were scattered and were requesting versions of a variety of platforms, with no one platform controlling the market, unlike the desktop world. Until a few months ago, they had only one choice: develop for each platform independently, picking and choosing which to support, each with huge costs and unknown payback.

That, however, is changing. Developers now have three ways to develop cross-platform. And while these technologies are still in their early days, they will evolve rapidly.

HTML 5 and the Mobile Web

One option is to forgo installed applications altogether and develop mobile Web applications. HTML 5, with its access to local databases, makes this possible. There are two major obstacles to this strategy right now: first, ubiquity of HTML 5-enabled browsers and, second, a willingness among customers to accept it as a standard.

While the first will be solved with time and pressure from other OS platforms, the second is a bigger problem. The customer's willingness to accept Web-based applications is a psychological change that takes years to evolve. Device owners have been trained that cell phone connections are inherently unstable. In many places the connection disappears, and until that is resolved this mental adjustment cannot begin to take hold.

Flash

Adobe recently announced its push into the mobile space, with Flash-enabled browsers for most platforms and a Flash-to-iPhone-app compiler for Apple's smartphones and handhelds. This would allow developers to write all of their apps in Flash and then deploy on multiple mobile browsers and the iPhone via a compiled application.

This still suffers from many of the same disadvantages of HTML 5, because it requires a psychological change in customers to accept running apps in the browser. In addition, Apple's hard-nosed stance against Flash in the browser will impede this movement because it will require two completely separate creation processes.

Finally, for Flash to take hold, operating system manufacturers will have to start treating Web-enabled applications the same as non-Web-enabled ones. For example, launching Web apps from the home page must become standard.

JavaScript Native Apps

A new class of applications has arisen. These are native applications that are compiled for a specific platform but that use Web technologies for the user interface. This has the most potential. The most prominent one currently is PhoneGap. Other solutions include Appcelerator and Rhomobile, which uses the Ruby on Rails Web development language.

These technologies, all open sourced, enable developers to write back-end processes in the native code and all of the user interfaces in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This application is then compiled into a native application. It can be uploaded to app stores, distributed via downloading and installed directly to the device.

The fundamental problem with mobile development isn't the back end, though. The backbone of all of these platforms is C or Java, which is generally portable if written with that intention. The problem is user interface development, which requires deep knowledge and understanding of each mobile device. Making the UI cross-platform solves the vast majority of problems associated with this kind of development. If you had to point to where the approach falls short, it would be that cross-platform applications don't feel "native," a shortcoming that would be solved by good design and better CSS work!

Conclusion

As the smartphone market evolves, we are unlikely to see a clear winner as we did in the PC business; and because of that, developers will be forced to write for multiple platforms. But for the first time in a decade, developers have options for multiple-device development. The cost and learning curve associated with writing native apps for every platform can finally be mitigated.

While all of these technologies are early to market, the writing is clearly on the wall. After more than a decade of discussion, the combination of Flash, HTML 5 and JavaScript will make "write once, use everywhere" a reality.

Guest author: Elia Freedman is the CEO of Infinity Softworks, the leading provider of software calculators, with over 15 million distributed. In its 13-year history, Infinity Softworks has developed applications for iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows, Palm OS and Windows Mobile. Elia writes about tech, mobile and running a business on his blog, eliainsider.com.

It would be nice if Apple gave us a better breakdown of the kinds of apps it actually delivers (free vs. paid, games vs. utilities, etc.). This kind of transparency is obviously not in Apple's DNA, so we depend on data from third-party services like AdMob for this information. According to AdMob, iPod touch and iPhone users are more likely to buy apps than users of any other mobile platform and are also more likely to interact with mobile ads.

For developers, no matter the grumblings about the App Store approval process, the App Store is simply the largest and most lucrative marketplace for their work right now.

What's most interesting about Waze is how it uses the power of the crowd to build its map database. Just by driving along with the application open, users are contributing data to Waze. Although this does make the service somewhat dependent on building critical mass in order to be successful, the company is confident they can do so. That's because Waze originally launched in Israel and in less than a year's time, they already have 91% of the country mapped. Here in the U.S., that process will obviously take longer, but Waze believes they'll have at least one metropolitan area completed in the next three months - the San Francisco Bay area, of course.

Since the application is designed to provide traffic alerts, one of its features allows users to contribute additional information like whether that's a speed trap ahead or just a fender bender slowing things down. Users can upload photos, too, so other Waze drivers can actually see what's causing the problem. This feature is a little disconcerting, though, since it does require the driver to interact with the phone while behind the wheel. However, Waze encourages the use of these features only when stopped, or even better, by having a passenger enter this info instead. (At least they disabled typing while the car is in motion. Whew!)

Also new to Waze is turn-by-turn directions, now available for free within the application. That feature alone should encourage more users to give it a shot, especially those who haven't purchased their own standalone GPS-based navigation device yet.

Early adopters can download the free mobile application from the company's homepage here. Just remember: this service only arrived in the U.S. this May so at this point, it may be more about helping build the map data than it is about using what's already there.

Google, of course, already offered this feature for Android users and Blackberry devices. For iPhone users - and especially for business users - this is a big deal, however, as it finally allows Google to offer a feature that Yahoo Mail users were able to enjoy from the day the iPhone launched. It's also worth noting that other services like Nuevasync have offered iPhone users a way to route around this problem for a while already.

It's important to note that the iPhone only offers support for a single Exchange account, so you can't use this new feature to push mail from both a personal and a business account at the same time, for example.

With today's current crop of social networking applications like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, the decisions about who you "friend" are made consciously, based on a number of criteria unique to the individual. Often, these networks become crowded with people who you barely know, but find interesting. That's a social network, yes, but it's not one that reflects your real-life relationships. Even Facebook, the current social darling, has moved away from being about real-life friendships. With the ability to friend public figures and brands and the ability to sort friends into lists, the push is on to expand your network beyond close, personal connections.

Similar issues face the mobile social networks emerging now. Applications like Loopt and Brightkite still require you to add friends which leads to, again, networks that consist of acquaintances and other folks you only know marginally well.

How Friendlee is Different

Because there really isn't a network that taps into your real world relationships, the HP researchers decided to build one. In Friendlee, the social graph is automatically constructed with minimal input required from the user since the software tracks the call and messaging history to determine your connections.

In addition, Friendlee introduces a set of "ambient awareness" indicators that provide useful information about your friends' statuses. For example, indicators will include current location, time spent at that location, local time, weather, a status message, and even your friend's phone's status: busy, phone on hold, engaged, silent, or vibrate. Imagine how useful it would be to know if your friend's phone was busy or turned to silent before you even dialed it!

Friendlee isn't just a contacts-replacement application, though. It is a network. The app actually lets you see your immediate contacts, of course, but it lets you see your friends' contacts as well. These lists are sorted by the strength of the connections, something that's determined by the frequency and duration of the interactions.

Because not everyone would be comfortable sharing their contact information with a social network, intimate or not, Friendlee includes privacy controls that let you configure who gets to see what. That way, you could configure anyone in the "Family" category to see everything, but other groups would have access to less information.

Friendlee consists of three components: the phone-based client, a web interface where you can interact with the data, and a backend server that stores a copy of all the information in a database. The client would sync with the server several times per minute, updating the system with call history, location, time, and other information.

Still a Prototype Only (Boo!)

At the moment, Friendlee is in prototype form for both the Android and Windows Mobile operating systems, so you can only drool over it now. The prototypes will be put into field testing while improvements are made before it ever becomes publicly available.

We normally wouldn't post about an application which you can't even try out yet (we hate to tease!), but this one sounded downright revolutionary. We were just too excited not to share the news with you.

Note: we requested more information about Friendlee's public availability but have not heard back yet from HP.

MySpace also announced that LG will preload the MySpace Mobile application on the next-generation of its Windows Mobile 6.1 phones.

The Future of MySpace is Mobile

MySpace, according to its own data, currently has about 20 million worldwide mobile users, and it offers mobile applications for all the major smart phone platforms, including the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, and Windows Mobile.

We know that MySpace, which has recently been overtaken by Facebook as the leading social networking site in the U.S., considers mobile social networking applications to be the next battleground, and this is definitely one of the reasons why the company is trying to get a foothold on all the major mobile platforms now. Whether this will be enough to hold back Facebook's current march towards dominating the social networking space remains to be seen, however.

The new sync capabilities are also available for any other phone that supports the SyncML standard.

Some Problems

One problem with this new system is that it will replace all your existing contacts on your phone with your Gmail contacts, which might be a deal breaker for some. Another deal breaker might be the fact that you can only configure one Active Sync account on the iPhone, which would be a problem for those of us who maintain more than one calendar (one private - one for work) and would like to use push for all of those.

Also, your Gmail contact list might a lot messier than you have realized, and it might take some work to manually recreate your current address book in Gmail.

Gmail Push Coming Soon?

Interestingly, Google now uses Microsoft's ActiveSync protocol to push updates wirelessly to the phone, which leads us to believe that enabling push email is the next logical step for Google. Chances are that Google is testing its infrastructure by only supporting ActiveSync for calendars and contacts first, and that it will release support for push email in the near future.

A related deal could put Windows Mobile in places that Google Android could be, as well, and the decision will come down to money more than it will quality of service for users. We like a lot of what Microsoft is doing these days, but we prefer the Google search experience and are hopeful for Android-driven innovation. Thus we hope that Microsoft can't pay its way into the center of hundreds of millions of more phones.

Mobile Search

Dan Frommer reported this summer that Google was working on a deal that would put their search bar on the top of Verizon mobile screens and he reported again this fall on a study that showed Google already has huge dominance in the mobile search market. (Yahoo is a distant second, Microsoft is nowhere to be seen in that study.)

Now the Wall St. Journal says that Microsoft may win a Verizon deal because "the software giant is offering significantly better financial incentives" than Google. As users, we prefer using Google for mobile search.

Mobile OS - Paying to Lock Out Android?

Microsoft is also negotiating a deal to put Windows Mobile software on more Verizon devices, according to the same reports. We like Windows Mobile but would love to see the even more open Google Android get a fair chance on Verizon phones. Of course there are huge sums of money on the line, but it's just one more part of the twisted picture of mobile carrier control to think of what a deal like this could do to the open mobile web that Android is aiming to create.

Get Ready for More Mobile Ads!

Mobile advertising is already big and is only going to get bigger. According to a recent study from mobile social networking company Limbo and GfK Technology:

40 percent of mobile phone users in the U.S., about 100 million people, recalled seeing an advertisement on their phone during 3Q08 (about two-thirds of the ads were text messages; the other one-third were display ads).

We're sure those numbers are only going to increase, and while we could care less who's serving up those ads - ad deals are intimately tied to search deals and in this case would presumably influence mobile Operating System deals as well.

While we honestly admire many of the things that Microsoft is doing of late and have serious concerns about Google's control over the general information universe - we're hoping from an innovation and quality of service perspective to see more Google and less Microsoft on hundreds of millions of phones.

PdaNet is an application that allows you to use the internet connection via your smartphone to connect your computer to the internet. PdaNet is available for PalmOS, Windows Mobile, and the iPhone. PalmOS and Windows Mobile users are required to install the app on both their phone and their computer. Users will also need a USB cable or bluetooth to enable the connection to their computer. PdaNet is available for jailbroken iPhones via Cydia, which works without the need for cords. Instead PdaNet runs via a Wi-Fi ad-hoc network that the user must create for their iPhone.

The Best Back-Up to Have

In our tests, connection speeds were faster than a dial-up connection. If you're looking for optimal broadband speeds then your connection will depend entirely upon your service provider. On Verizon Wireless, we were able to watch Youtube videos and download a song or two within 2-3 minutes. On the AT&T network with no 3G connection, downloads and loading times were about 5-10 minutes for pages with videos or music. We were not able to test AT&T's 3G connection on our iPhone. PdaNet is available for free on the iPhone. PalmOS and Windows Mobile users will have to cough up $34 to use this app, though a trial version is available to download. Is it worth the money? We think so if you'll ever need to use your smartphone as a back-up internet connection.

In this show we will cover the state of the mobile application development market, focusing on Android, Windows Mobile, iPhone, and more.

• Loke Uei Tan, Tech Product Manager from Windows Mobile
• Tom Conrad, CTO of Pandora
• Ben Strackany from mobile development company DevelopmentNow.
• Dan Morrill, Developer Advocate for Google Android (unable to join at last minute)

Note: we invited Apple to send a representative from the iPhone team, but received no response.

The show is hosted as always by Sean Ammirati, with Richard MacManus and Marshall Kirkpatrick from ReadWriteWeb on the call. We're also very pleased to have last100 editor Steve O'Hear back for this show, given that last100 covers the Mobile Web space widely and deeply.

Before the show starts, we're interested in what questions you have for the panelists. Please leave a comment on this post and one of the RWW crew on the call (Sean, Marshall, Steve and myself) will do our best to ask your question.

We will post the audio from the show at the end, but we hope you join us LIVE on Calliflower or Facebook.

UPDATE: the show is now finished, here is the audio:

Download MP3

If you've been waiting a lifetime to get off Skyfire's waiting list, you don't have to wait any longer. With the release of version 0.8 of Skyfire, the application is now available to all Windows Mobile users with compatible devices. So what's new with the app itself?

• New Super Bar that combines search and URL entry into one bar
• Skyfire can now be set as the default browser
• New search bar on the Homescreen
• New start page redesign
• Faster start-up and page loading times
• Share a link via SMS
• Invite friends to download Skyfire via SMS
• Save an image
• Download files

One of the most popular capabilities that Skyfire has over Safari on the iPhone is the ability to play flash videos. This means you can browse popular video sites such as Youtube and Vimeo, or music sites such as Last.FM and Imeem, to play media clips on the go. Playback speed and quality has noticeably improved in the latest Skyfire update. With videos, the mobile browser's playback quality would suffer significantly when zooming into a video while it was playing. In our tests of the latest update, this bug seems to have been fixed and playback quality stayed the same when zooming in and out.

What we think will be a really popular new feature is Skyfire's ability to download files. You may be thinking that you can't download anything outside of a Word or PDF file. Well, you're wrong. We were able to download .mp3 files, Gmail attachments, .CAB files and more to our Windows Mobile handset. Skyfire lets you choose where to save a file and presents you with a progress view of your download. However, you won't be able to do anything else while the file is downloading.

Two Big Problems

We encountered a major bug that we feel users of Skyfire should be aware of. Before the update, if Skyfire lost service we would simply have to quit the application and restart it. In this update, Skyfire attempts to reconnect instead of dropping the connection completely. However, we never got the browser to reconnect. Instead, a continuous loop of reconnection attempts occured and we eventually had to exit the browser and restart it.

Another big problem with Skyfire is that there is still no option to import your Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) bookmarks. We deemed this to be a high-priority feature in our initial review of Skyfire. For new users, this will be very important and could be a deal breaker for those who live in their mobile browsers and have one too many bookmarks.

Even Better Than Before

Skyfire users will not be disappointed with the latest update. In fact, we feel the small changes that have been made will make the browsing experience with Skyfire even better! Symbian users can expect an update very soon, though Blackberry and Palm devices still aren't supported by Skyfire.

With FriendMobilizer, you can view your friend's information and profiles, write on their walls, browse photo albums, approve friend requests, view group and event invites, read your new wall posts, read the messages in your inbox, update your status, and more.

Click Image to See Larger Version

The application is currently available for both Windows Mobile devices and Pocket PCs and can be downloaded from the web site at www.faceofmobile.com. However, according to the company, the generic software platform developed for FriendMobilizer will soon be ported to other mobile OS's as well. In addition, the company plans to build mobile apps for other social networks in the future.

Windows Mobile is the second most popular mobile operating system worldwide. Flash, meanwhile, is arguably the most popular rich media platform on the web reaching almost 99% of Internet users, according to Adobe.

For Microsoft, even though they're still banking on Silverlight, licensing Flash Lite now is a smart move. It gives their mobile OS a tangible advantage over the surging iPhone, and as as Larry Dignan points out, it gives them an opportunity to learn how to roll out a rich media platform on the mobile. Flash Lite now means access to a ton of already made rich media content, video, and applications that users of some rival platforms don't have access to.

Even though Silverlight has signed some high profile partnerships to deliver web video, including with Major League Baseball and NBC for the Beijing Olympics, it is still largely not used by developers. Further, a mobile version of Silverlight won't ship for a few months. If Microsoft can expand the reach of Silverlight on the web via more partnerships like the ones it has been signing, then it can worry about pushing Silverlight to mobile platforms. We agree with Dignan at ZDNet: in a couple of years, this partnership will probably be irrelevant, but in the short term, it's a great move for both companies.

Congratulations IT, you've won a $30 Amazon voucher - courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Netflix Queue Widget.

Here is IT's full comment:

"I'm most interested in the level of "Exchange Support" that Apple is really going to be able to build into the new IPhone. As a heavy user of both an IPhone, and a Windows Mobile phone (personal/work), the only way I can see the IPhone even coming close to being comparable to the WM phone (at least in terms of exchange feature sets) is if Apple can completely copy the WM exchange integration. It's not just about mail anymore. I'll need complete integration with my exchange calendar (online free/busy, shared calendars, resource scheduling), access to the Global Address List, as well as my contacts, as well as complete access to my e-mail. AND, all those things will have to work as well as they work on my WM phone. That's a pretty tall order, even with the SDK and the avid (but relatively small) group of apple developers. Additionally, Apple and their carriers (CINGULAR, I'M TALKING TO YOU) will have to put forth a cheaper phone. $299 IPhone that I can't insure and has a more expensive unlimited data plan, or a $49 (or god forbid free) WM6 phone that I can insure for $5 a month, has a cheaper data plan, etc. Which of those costs would you like to try and justify to your CFO? Overall, I just don't think the IPhone, even with all the changes, will ever be thought of as a good WM6 / BlackBerry alternative."

Participate in our poll

As somebody said yesterday in a meeting that I was in, iPhone with ActiveSync may spell the end for Windows Mobile! Think about it: Exchange is arguably the most important functionality for an enterprise that runs Microsoft software (and many enterprises do). So if the iPhone, one of the fastest growing consumer mobile phones currently and with similar industry-changing potential as the iPod, can sync your data between home and office -- what use would you have for a Microsoft Windows mobile phone? It seems that Microsoft is taking a huge risk here, letting the iPhone usurp the need for Windows Mobile phones in the enterprise.

What do you think? Participate in the poll below, and outline your reasons for your vote in the ReadWriteWeb comments.