The document discusses trends in mobile application development. It notes that mobile development is moving towards centralized app portals like Google Play and the App Store, as well as more open technologies. This has implications for developers. Centralized portals allow developers to reach more customers through a single store, while open platforms reduce costs and increase potential users. However, developers must choose platforms wisely based on market size, accessibility, career opportunities, and creative freedom. The trends present both opportunities and threats for developers in the changing mobile landscape.

1. Trends in Mobile
Application Development
Onkar Tibe
Director, Cueapps
1
The Mobile innovation center by Cuelogic

2. About Cuelogic
• Cuelogic is an offshore product development company.
• Cuelogic is your partner for building cutting edge software
products using Opensource and Mobile technologies
• Strong focus on user interface development and user centric
design.
• Excellent expertise in open source and mobile technologies with
Silicon valley start ups.
• Cueapps is the Mobile innovation center by Cuelogic. We develop
games and apps for consumers and businesses. We saw the
potential of mobile devices and put together a team of highly
qualified engineers and designers - a team that can think out of
the box. Driven by the opensource philosophy our first choice of
platform is obviously Android.
2

3. Topics
• Introduction
• Current Practices
o Development Tools
o Portals
o Platform Integration
• Trends
o Towards Portal Centralization
o Towards Technology Openness
o Towards full integration
• Implications for Developers
o Implications for portal organisation
o Implications of Technology Openness
o Implications of Platform Choice
• Conclusion
3

4. Introduction
• Mobile computing has caught the attention of the research community for quite some time and has
also reached the commercial industry and mainstream consumers via smart phones and PDAs.
• Devices can run rich standalone applications as well as distributed client-server applications that
access information via a web gateway. This opens new avenues for future mobile application and
service development.
• During many years, the development of mobile services was mostly controlled and managed by the
mobile network operators (MNO), phone manufacturers, and some mobile application and content
providers.
•The potential of the mobile application market is seen to reach $9 billion by 2011.
•The current trends indicate that the market structure and value chain are evolving. Roles are changed,
combined and exchanged.
•The current mobile development market is dominated by very big Platform providers namely:
• Google with its Android OS,
• Nokia with its Symbian OS,
• Apple with its iPhone OS,
• RIM with its Blackberry OS,
• Microsoft with its Windows CE OS family, and
In this session, we go thorough analysis of the current mobile development landscape with hints of
future trends as well as indications for developers on what aspects can be used to position themselves in
the market.
4

5. Current Practice
Development Tools:
• Every development platform is its software development kit (SDK)
• 2 Models are available
• The Cathedral Model - a closed platform, where most of the code is hidden from developers
and an all mighty architect plans every inch of the platform's construction.
E.g. Apple, Microsoft
• The Bazaar Model - open source platform, where any third party developer can access the
entire platform with no, or little, restrictions and contribute to the construction of its structure.
E.g. Google, Nokia (is in a transition)
5

6. Current Practice
Portals Tools:
• Mobile portals are considered to be an essential element in the mobile application distribution
process since they play the role of intermediary between developers and consumers
• 2 Portals are available
• Decentralize Portal - Nokia, Linux, Microsoft, and LiMo have a decentralized portal approach.
Developers can freely upload their applications on any third party portal, as there is no
centralized policy.
• Centralize Portal - one portal is proposed as the main portal on which most applications are
published. This approach gives the main portal provider a competitive advantage over others.
Apple and Google propose such a single point of sale with the AppStore and the Android Market.
6

7. Current Practice
Platform Integration:
• Some platforms focus on their core business, which is to provide an OS with programming support for
developers, whereas others integrate the entire distribution process.
• Different Types of Integration
• Full Integration - Platforms with a full integration have a strict control over every step of the
distribution model from device manufacturing to application publishing
• Partial Integration - Platforms with partial integration focus on application development and
application sale by integrating a portal
• Device Integration - In the device integration model, platforms also manufacture devices but
are not in the application portal business
• No Integration - Platforms with no integration focus only on their core business
7

8. Trends
Towards portal centralization:
Towards technological openness:
Towards full integration:
8

9. Implications for Developers
the centralization of portal changes the way developers can distribute their application and reach a mass-
market of consumers.
The technological openness implies that developers would use deferent standards to develop their
application and somehow work in a more collaborative mode.
These trends can be seen as opportunities but also threats for developers.
Therefore, it is crucial that developers have a good understanding of the possible implications of each
trend.
They need to be able to choose the platform for which they want to develop knowing all the
implications.
•Implications of portal centralization - Portal centralization is an major shift for
developers. It allows them to reach all potential customers through one shop
•Implications of technological openness -
Moving towards open technology allows platform providers to reduce
development costs and possibly increase the number of consumers.
An open source project can provide career opportunities for developers willing
to contribute to the platform development
•Implication of the platform choice – Depends on following factors
• the number of potential consumers who can be reached
• career opportunities that application development can lead to
• freedom, where developer feel that they can program what they want 9

10. Moral of the story:
• The implications that deferent market and technology trends have on the mobile
application development market.
• The current evolutions show that the game for the developers has changed
dramatically.
• Many new opportunities for them to develop, distribute, and generate significant
revenues with the emerging mobile application portals.
• As discussed, application portals tend to become more centralized, facilitating
the link between developers and consumers.
• In this changing environment, choosing for which platform to develop reveals to be
challenging and we proposed three simple criteria:
1. market size
2. Accessibility
3. career opportunities
4. creative freedom
10

11. THANK YOU
11