Read the summary and the most important questions on Mobile Platforms | Kevin van Ingen

• 1 Mobile Platforms

• Which mobile networks are there and what are there differences?

  It starts from 1G to 4G. The current mobile networks we are using are 3G and some supports 4G.
  
  The first generation is analog signal with bad range, then we have 2G with improved range and security with support to SMS, GPRS, UMTS. The 3rd generation is differs in the better broadband, also called mobile broadband generation, up to 200 kb/sec. The 4th generation is focussed on a broad market and based on IP. Prediction on 5G is in 2020, then it becomes a world standard, using IPv6 and have battery improvements.
  
  Examples are: HSPA+, LTE and WiMAX

• Why is CT (Communication Technology) an enabler?

  Without communication technology there is no communication through phone in the first place. Because of the CT as an enabler developers can deploy mobile apps, telco's can offer mobile networks, making the whole mobile ecosystem being alive.
  

• What is your prediction of the mobile platforms in 2012?

  In 2012 the mobile market is even more growing. The mobile platforms is dominated by Android for the majority, then iOS and Microsoft.
  WebOS will be replaced and Symbian slowly fades away.

• What have been changed through the years when a customer purchases a mobile phone?

  The choice in buying a mobile phone is not based in the first place on the phone's hardware functionalities, but on the software. Since phone stores mostly sell smartphones nowadays, the hardware capabilities are equal.
  We have to compare by the software side like the mobile OS (Android, iOS, Windows) and the apps.

• 2 Mobile Development

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• Why is a software architecture document useful in mobile development?

  First of all a SAD is always useful, no matter it is for mobile development or other developments.
  Mobile apps are complex with lots of KLOC, we need something to organize it and share it with others. It describes the trade-off, these are very important for the final product.
  

• The business logica is about the same for every mobile application no matter which platform, but how come there are still shortages for developers on mobile development?

  The reason is that the mobile OS decides what apps there are. Although their architecture looks a like (they all have a layer with applications, layer with frameworks and libraries and UI), they still have differences in dealing with the hardware core functions.
  
  Just like the UI toolkits is different on all the mobile OS, the power management: Android using wake-locks and Apple has limit in the concurrent apps running at the same time, the languages, 3rd party access, openess, messaging.

• 3 Multi-platform app development

• What is the relationship between MDD and multi-platform?

  Model Driven Development is based on designing the business logica and deploy it on different mobile platforms, whereas multi-platform is based on app development on 1 platform and runs on multiple platforms. The similarity is that the focus is based on write once run everywhere principle. The difference is one is based on model development which does not require to build an app.

• What's the difference between multi-platform and platform independant?

  Multi-platform means a mobile app is running on 2 or more platforms and platform independant means running on all the available platforms, which is not possible.
  
  Multi-platform just mean 1 app built, with little adjustments to be run on more platforms. Platform independant is download and run everywhere without changing the source code.

• What multi-platform frameworks do you know?

  There are web apps cross-platform and native apps cross-platform frameworks.
  
  For example web is Phonecap, JQuery Mobile, JQTouch, Sencha Touch.
  
  For example native is Mono for Android, Rhodes Framework, Mosync.

• A customer ask you for advice on to build a native app, a hybrid app or a web app, what would you suggest?

  First need to know what app it is. If it is an advanced game which requires lots of hardware core functions and high performances I would go for a native app. If the app is a mobile version of the website than go for a web app. At last if the app needs to be run on different platforms and requires not much performance and hardware core functions then go for a hybrid app.