Mobile Development News

I placed this in the "other" category because it's very general to any mobile development.

While developers could target a number of different devices (and thus platforms) ranging from televisions (with the TiVo SDK recently released), watches (such as Microsoft's SmartWatch platform or the Palm OS), PDAs, desktops, and more, there is one device that should not be overlooked. With 1.2 billion (1,200,000,000) devices already out there, the cell phone has become the most widely distributed platform — a platform that can be targeted by applications.

Well, that doesn't necessarily mean there are 1.2 billion handsets we can develop for. But there are hundreds of millions of J2ME, BREW, and Symbian devices out there. At last count, BREW devices alone were over 40 million. Given growth, downloads since then increased from 200 million to 300 million. That could put the handset count to as many as 60 million (yeah, that's fuzzy math... but what are we to do when Qualcomm stops publishing those numbers?).

All that and they're fun, too. Oh, and profitable. Informa estimates a $3.6 billion market for wireless games next year, and IDC figures there will be over 70 million wireless gamers the year after next.

That's in 2006 and that's a lot of money and a lot of people. I'm one of those gamers. And I bet many readers here are, too. Us developers tend to drink our own juice. (Of course, Mamlambo sells mobile games, too. They're fun and easy to play. ;) )

Anyway, enough rambling and shameless plugging. This article makes a good coffee read:

Mobile Development: Why Should I Care? A Q&A with Nokia