Apple’s iPhone is the favorite smart phone platform among mobile developers, according to a recent survey conducted.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s hardly a surprise, even if the ongoing controversy about Apple\u2019s beta iPhone OS 4.0 developer agreement suggests some discontent among those creating iPhone apps.<\/p>\n
What is a surprise is that Android did not place second in the development platform race.<\/p>\n
Of the 217 mobile application developers surveyed by Ovum:<\/p>\n
81% said they were developing for iPhone or planning to do so.<\/p>\n
Among the other top smartphone platforms, the figures were:<\/p>\n
74% for RIM\u2019s BlackBerry OS.<\/p>\n
66% for Microsoft\u2019s Windows Phone OS (formerly Windows Mobile).<\/p>\n
64% for Android.<\/p>\n
56% for Symbian.<\/p>\n
However, expect Android to become more popular among developers.<\/p>\n
Android, after all, is the newest of the top five platforms and various research firms like Gartner expect the number of Android devices shipped will surpass the number of iPhones shipped in the next two to three years.<\/p>\n
But more significantly, Android\u2019s openness should make development easier, once developers become acquainted with the system.<\/p>\n
One particularly intriguing feature that Android developers have yet to fully exploit is called Intent.<\/p>\n
Android\u2019s developer documentation defines it thus: \u201cAn Intent provides a facility for performing late runtime binding between the code in different applications. Its most significant use is in the launching of activities, where it can be thought of as the glue between activities. It is basically a passive data structure holding an abstract description of an action to be performed.\u201d<\/p>\n
What that means is that applications can call functions that exist in different applications on the user\u2019s Android device.<\/p>\n
Steve Brown, CEO of Snaptic, likens the technology to Web mashups, in which different Web services can be easily combined.<\/p>\n
Snaptic makes a note taking application, 3banana for Android and the iPhone, that syncs with the Web. Android developers, using Intent, have the option to include a call to Snaptic\u2019s note taking code in 3banana so it can be used in their own application.<\/p>\n
Android Intent means that developers don\u2019t have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, in every program. If they want to implement bar code reading, for example, all they need to do is call another app that has exposed its bar reading functionality through Intent.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like a little eco-system of developers working together,\u201d said Brown in a phone interview. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s different. What it allows is for developers to be specialists and do something really well rather than each doing everything themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to imagine a similar technology on the iPhone, given Apple\u2019s tight code controls.<\/p>\n
But it might come to pass nevertheless. \u201cIf people are doing better stuff faster because of the openness of Android, the iPhone is going to have to respond to that,\u201d said Brown.<\/p>\n
All that remains is for Android developers to prove that openness really is better.<\/p>\n
Resource<\/b>:
\nhttp:\/\/www.informationweek.com\/blog\/main\/archives\/2010\/04\/advantage_andro.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apple’s iPhone is the favorite smart phone platform among mobile developers, according to a recent survey conducted. That\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[90,272,129],"class_list":{"0":"post-1062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-enterprise-mobile-application-development","8":"tag-android","9":"tag-android-application","10":"tag-android-os"},"yoast_head":"\n