Developers will have to get used to closed mobile ecosystems

If announcements by major mobile players this month are anything to go by, the future landscape for mobile phones will feature more fences and walled gardens than open vistas – which might not be a bad thing.

Though apps written for multiple platforms can make it seem to the user they live in a heterogeneous mobile world, nearly all the big players – Apple, Samsung, Google (with Android), and coming up on the outside lane, Nokia/Microsoft – want you to live primarily inside their mobile offering.

"Really, what we're looking at now is three major platform plays," says mobile developer Dermot Casey, founder of app company Tapadoo, speaking by phone from Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco last week.

He numbers those as Apple's iPhone, Google's Android, and Nokia/Microsoft, with Samsung a hopeful, but as yet unrealised, contender.

In the first week of June, both Samsung and Apple made clear they want to lure users, as well as the all-important app developers, into increasingly locked-down worlds where purchases and services are channelled through their platform offerings.

At WWDC, Apple launched iOS8 for developers, the next version of its iPhone operating system. While it announced closer integration between the iPhone, Mac and iPad – a more versatile approach for developers – it also launched a new cloud-based back end for storing data that would be usable only by iPhone apps, and would require developers to store the same back end data in non-Apple clouds for other versions of their app.

“Apple are very clever and have a very useful ecosystem,” notes Mícheál Ó Foghlú, the co-founder and chief technology officer of FeedHenry, which makes cross-platform mobile apps.

But in announcing a new approach for developing apps, which will now need to link to Apple’s cloud, the company has frustrated many developers who will have to learn the new approach and also, duplicate their efforts for other platforms.

In addition, he says, “the problem with a private cloud is it won’t match the pace of development of the public cloud. Public clouds and smartphones are moving at the fastest pace.”

Apple has not had great form, either, when it comes to private clouds, he says, noting the botched performance of Apple’s initial attempt at a map application.

But Casey, who primarily develops for iPhone and says the platform is far easier to develop for than Android, feels Apple will get it right. He also likes the opportunity of being able to develop more easily across Apple’s hardware offerings.

And anyway, he says, these closed mobile ecosystems are going to be the future that developers have to get used to.

Entrenched

“We’re only at the start of this revolution,” he says. “If you become entrenched as an Apple user, you’ll find it hard to move off it. But it’s exactly the same if you’re an Android user already, where you’re probably using

Gmail

, Google Maps and so on.”

Samsung has signalled it wants to head the same way. With an announcement timed to coincide with the start of Apple’s WWDC, the South Korean company offered a glimpse of what it wishes to do with its Tizen platform (a Linux-based challenge to Google’s Android operating system).

“The key thing is they’d have control over their own services, but they have to develop the equivalent of Gmail, Maps and so on,” says Ó Foghlú.

“And they’re trying to have Tizen have the same user experience and interface as Android, so the migration from Android (the operating system on Samsung phones) to Tizen is smooth. If they succeed, they’ll be on par with Google and Apple.”

However, Tizen development, now a joint effort between Samsung and Intel and some others, has run behind schedule.

“Tizen now has some legs, but it has slipped on delivery dates,” he says. “It’s not yet a success, and its future is up in the air.”

Casey adds that, because Samsung uses Android, it’s hard to tell whether Google will be a partner or a competitor for Samsung.

Meanwhile, he observes that Microsoft and Nokia are making a similar platform play, with handsets running the Microsoft Phone OS, which can connect back into Microsoft's cloud and across its other operating system platforms for other devices.

“Look at what Nokia did at [annual Barcelona industry event] Mobile World Congress earlier this year – they showed handsets with a back-end into Microsoft [services and software].”

And he doesn’t think the once-dominant handset maker, now a division of Microsoft, is an also-ran. “I believe they’re coming back,” he says emphatically. “First, they never lost their build quality in making a phone. Using Windows Phone, they finally have a decent phone, and one that feels like a phone that’s not trying to be an iPhone. It’s at least, a credible alternative to Apple and Android.

Given Microsoft’s extensive presence in most businesses, he feels the Nokia/Microsoft combination may well become the default, business smartphone and platform option.

“Microsoft is not going to let this go. Apple actually announced a really good set of business features for developers, but they don’t really push them, and don’t seem to care that much about that market. But Microsoft’s already there in businesses. Windows Phone handsets may well become the one the business guy carries – maybe begrudgingly,” Casey says.

Casey offers s snapshot of how he thinks the market is developing, based on his company’s own recent experience. For a long time, Tapadoo only developed for iPhone, but gradually, clients began to ask for apps that run on both Android and iPhone.

Doing an app for both platforms is the norm. “Now, they’re starting to ask about Windows Phone,” he says. “Give it a while, and I suspect clients will be wanting apps for all three platforms.”

Ó Foghlú welcomes the varied offerings, despite the extra work this potentially loads on mobile developers.

“It’s good. There’s active competition, and real innovation happening that’s driving the competition, unlike many areas of technology right now where competition is actually being slugged out in the courts” as companies battle over patent cases, he says.

“I’m optimistic. Barriers to entry are low, so new companies can come in with new business models – which are more important than products. Mobile is impacting whole industries right now.”