I really need to talk more about what I know, that being mobile application development. Let’s call this post the start of an actual category on Blurry Words, the Mobile Development Category. I hate the idea of having categories, because they put an obligation on me to write something related to a specific topic. As you can see by reading through some of my posts, I rarely ever write about related subject matter. I’m all over the freaking map. However, I figure if there is ever going to be a topic that I can consistently write about, and should have a consistent stream of new data on, that would be the mobile industry and developing mobile apps.
It’s a complicated platform to target, the mobile platform. It’s plagued by device fragmentation. No two devices are the same; whether it is a difference in heap size, screen size, battery life, connectivity options, development languages, the same dev language interpreted differently by each manufacturer; it is a cluster fuck of an industry right now. There are efforts to remedy this, the Android platform being one example, but it is just making it worse for the near future. The effort for change only increases the fragmentation, with the hope of eliminating it eventually. We shall see. I’m hopeful, but the only problem is that at least a half dozen organizations all had the same brilliant idea to unify the platform at the same time, which seems to set up the industry to move away from one fragmented environment towards another. As I said, we shall see…
Having said all this, I love being apart of this industry. It’s exciting and fresh and in need of so much further growth that you can’t keep up with it. Right now it’s a bitch, a real struggle, but who wants to be in a situation where everything’s already figured out?
Plus, mobile applications are on the verge of being mainstream. I would say we are in the elbow of exponential growth towards mobile apps being an every day part of the lives of the masses. Here’s a few observations that I believe reflect this:
Wireless Carriers are starting to offer “all you can eat” data plans. Cell phones are obviously mainstream, but the apps that run on them are not, with one of the main reasons being the cost incurred to download an application. I’m fairly certain that the internet’s turning point coincided with a similar move away from the “pay by the minute” model.
Two of the most socially recognizable technology giants, Apple and Google, are now involved in the industry. That alone injects a ton of money towards R&D. But, it also brings a huge number of people that will already buy anything related to the company.
And BlackBerry, one of the most successful platforms for mobile applications to date, though limited mainly to the business sector, has gone on the offensive to push their product more into the consciousness of consumers.
It’s an industry ready to explode. And it’s in need of as many developers as possible to share their past experiences. Dialog is important, because not only is rapid growth accomplished by building on the work done by the early adopters of an industry, the growth is stabilized by learning from the mistakes and experiences of those same developers.
So, here’s me doing my part…
