Mobile device platforms - stand up and be counted
As Philippe Winthrop points out in this entry on the Symbian Foundation announcement, currently there are six choices for mobile device platforms !!
Talk about too much choice - reminds me of the book ‘The Paradox of Choice‘ by Barry Schwartz. Although Schwartz focuses on how we become paralyzed when faced with the insane number of choices when it comes to choosing a pair of jeans, breakfast cereal, 401(k) plans, etc.;you could almost extend it to mobile device platforms as well.
Since monocultures are not necessarily a good thing whether it is agriculture or device operating systems, you want to have a reasonable choice as an application developer. As I mentioned in an earlier post, you pick the device platform based on a variety of factors. But right now, the learning curve when going across device platforms is not a trivial one - which forces developers to make some hard choices. And I am not talking just about a vanilla two-person developer outfit, it applies equally to large ISVs as well. To their credit, the Symbian Foundation in their announcement offered compatibility with Symbian 9 and S60 3rd edition.
Extending this further, Om Malik has a good writeup of the platform players and then offers up his odds on the eventual winners.
What is interesting in the coverage of the Symbian Foundation announcement is the near absence of any mention of Palm - used to be, they had a decent developer platform, program, and following not too long ago (at least, geologically speaking).
