Standardization has been a moving target in the world of mobile platforms. Unlike PCs and the web, where platform standards have been whittled down to a select few, mobile developers are facing the opposite problem. The number of operating systems and runtime environments continue to proliferate as new players enter an already overcrowded field and more devices ship from carriers at an exponential rate. What this means is an even more fragmented mobile ecosystem and all the development challenges that go with that. While many hoped that an operating standard for mobile applications and content would arise, it is becoming more evident that this will not happen anytime soon, at least not at the operating system, run time environment or device level.
So the question remains: how can the mobile content industry scale its deployment efforts in a way that is economically beneficial to everyone in the mobile value chain? Without a solution in place, the mobile platform at large will continue to lag in innovation behind the more traditional Internet world. For example, services like eBay, Google, Facebook, YouTube and Digg all emerged on the Internet, not the mobile platform, and had tremendous success at providing totally new and widely enjoyed end-user experiences. The lack of standards (especially for Web 2.0 applications, which by definition require a common set of communications capabilities) will continue to keep mobile as a secondary consideration for true innovators.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that a possible solution to the standardization challenge is the development platform. While this is not the typical route followed on past digital platforms, such as the PC or gaming consoles, where operating environments are few, the mobile development platform represents a potential "common ground" that can be leveraged for scalability and efficiency.
A fragmented landscape
The fragmentation issue is certainly nothing new in mobile handset circles. The growth, scope and size of the market - now at 3 billion plus mobile phone users globally, with over 10,000 carrier device types and counting - has always offered a rich breeding ground for new devices and applications. At the same time, because of the lucrative and competitive nature of this rapidly expanding market, handset manufacturers and operators have been driven to maintain market share by offering proprietary devices and applications that speak to their respective brands and/or markets. What all this means is developers are facing a new industry tipping point that will push the boundaries of scalability and adaptability further and more quickly than ever before.
To see a solution to the problem, one's obvious tendency is to look to the past to predict the future. Logic would dictate that the operating system or runtime environment would be the perfect grounds for standardization. After all, it worked in the PC world with Microsoft creating a standard early on in the game, which the industry then rallied around. Gaming consoles did start out with competing operating systems, but the numbers are limited enough that porting and adaptation has never been a particularly overwhelming challenge for developers.
The mobile ecosystem however is populated with a plethora of operating systems and runtime environments, with the two largest being Java ME (Java Mobile Edition) and BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) globally. As a result, mobile content developers must now deal with the subtle variations in implementation of these OS and runtimes multiplied across the many thousands of mobile phones worldwide. Complexity can therefore increase 30-40 times over traditional OS and PC environments. This is not going to change - and will in fact get worse.
Why is that? Mobile operators play in a fiercely competitive environment where change is rapid and customer loyalty is the key to profitability. They offer consumers new devices on literally a monthly basis that feature new capabilities and improved functionality to differentiate themselves from their rivals. Additionally, the handset vendors are constantly adding new features and capabilities, but implementing them in slightly different ways. This desire to compete and innovate results in more devices, each slightly different from past models and other models. Now, each of them needs a slightly altered version of an existing application, so that that application will run on it properly.
