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Mobile Carriers Cry "Less Operating Systems"

Posted by Hemos on from the less-qq-more-pew-pew dept.

A NYTimes story says "Multiple systems have hampered the growth of new services, mobile phone executives say. " The story does a good job of capturing some of the changing dynamics in the mobile OS market — but rightly raises the point that given the sheer size of the mobile market, it's unlikely we're going to see the homogenization we have in the desktop market.

3 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Shome mishtake shurely? by Vollernurd · · Score: 5, Informative

    "FEWER" systems! "FEWER"!

    I know they have trouble adding-up, but jeez...

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    1. Re:Shome mishtake shurely? by doggkruse · · Score: 4, Informative

      THANK YOU!

      For those who don't get it, fewer is for things you can count, less is for things you can't.

  2. Mobile developers cry it too (well, "fewer") by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Informative
    On today's build list:
    • Symbian UIQ
    • Symbian Series 60
    • Symbian Series 60 v2.0
    • Symbian Series 60 v2.2
    • Symbian Series 60 v3.0
    • Symbian Series 80
    • Symbian Series 80 v2
    • BREW 2.10
    • BREW 3.12
    • BREW 3.14
    • Palm 5.4
    • Palm 6
    • WinCE 4 SP 2003
    • WinCE 5 SP
    • WinCE 5 PPC
    • J2ME CLDC
    • J2ME CDC
    • J2ME JSR-184
    • J2ME M3G
    And that's just the ones that I can remember off the top of my head. Some of these are legacy builds, but there are still customers who want them. A large part of our product family is platform abstraction code; if you want to support multiple mobile platforms, you either bloat your code with abstractions, or drown it in #ifdefs. In either case, you have to write to the lowest common denominator, and avoid anything that's even remotely platform dependent, which does engender decent coding discipline but at the result of reducing productivity. That's mostly a C issue, but even J2ME isn't immune, particularly when you have to deal with extensions like OpenGL ES or M3G.

    If I never had to work in anything but (e.g.) J2MD CDC OpenGL ES or (gasps of outrage!) WinCE SP2005 again, I'd be a very happy bunny indeed.

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