Aplikacje sieciowe jako kierunek rozwoju oprogramowania urządzeń mobilnych

Referat przedstawia problem obecnie zachodzących zmian w przemyśle tworzącym oprogramowanie urządzeń mobilnych (komputerów mobilnych). Autor, opierając się na doniesieniach prasowych i analizie rynku, przedstawia przyczyny i możliwe efekty zachodzących na rynku oprogramowania zmian.

The business of making native apps for mobile devices is decreasing, crushed by a fragmented market and restrictive business practices. From the technical point of view there are two main problems. One is proliferation of operating systems. Several years ago there were only two platforms: Pocket PC and Palm OS. Now there are at least ten platforms, and a fragmentation of Java makes this situation even worse. The second prob-lem is certification. Every developer has to certify with both the OS (operating system) and each carrier and it costs too much. The problems are so serious that the mobile web, despite its many technical drawbacks, is now a better way to deliver new functionality to mobile devices. Section 2 provides the brief history of mobile hardware and software industry. In the next two section there are presented the market problems of native mobile application developers and also the customer needs which will drive a rapid rise in mobile web development, probably largely replacing the mobile applications business. All this has huge implications on mobile operators, handset companies, developers, and users. The author presents not only problems, but also opportunities and new trends. Section 4 gives the comparison of mobile software environments, native and web-based, and their attractiveness to the developers (illustrated in Fig. 1). There is presented some information on modern technologies just introduced by market leaders, especially: Microsoft's Silverlight, Adobe's AIR and the newest Linux+Qt-based platform introduced by Nokia. In Section 5 a few exam-ples of web-based applications (Figs. 2, 3, 4, 5) show new trends in which former desktop applications are replaced by the web-mobile ones.