Too many mobile platforms

The smartphone hardware stacks available today haven’t matured enough, and thereby the current mobile OS implementations. Some of it is because of the current way of our software and hardware manufacturers working together. We see that the power of the smartphones and mobile devices keep increasing with new and improved processors (and other hardware features).

Consumers get power ,based on the options they get. It is better to have more options. Too many options would, at some point, get to equilibrium anyway (based on market response and other factors like absorption, adoptions, and acquisitions).

Developers get the power, based on the reach that their applications can get. “Reaching mass/heavy user base” is the key, not the number of mobile OS the applications support. I doubt whether application developers would care about an unsupported mobile OS, if their current application, running in mobile OS “x”, is used by 1M or more users in an emerging market. Does anyone care about selling/writing software for a mobile phone costing INR 1,500.00 used by 10M users?

“Write once and run everywhere” technologies are great, but they haven’t reached their potential yet. Products like alcheMo from Innaworks are great in terms of bridging the gap among mobile OS/Platform implementations. Yet, there is a lot we can/should expect in getting a synergy to help consumers and developers alike reap the rewards.

There is no need to be complacent after agreeing to a Universal Charging Solution (UCS). It would be great to witness the day, where we can buy a phone and choose the OS to load on it, just like the way we use our PCs/Laptops/Server nodes. Now, that would be a goal that the mobile OS and hardware manufacturers can shoot for.

Let the consumers win and help developers win customers!!!