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Which Phone To Develop For?
Rob MacKenzie writes "I have to decide on a mobile phone to develop for. We're building a house with some automation built in, and we want the mobile phone to be able to control certain aspects of it, and retrieve information on what's going on in the house. Our choices are the usual suspects: Apple's IPhone, RIM's Blackberry, Nokia's line (Symbian), any Android phone we can get in Canada, J2ME generic app, or a Web-based UI we would interact with in the phone's browser. What would you choose if you had to go with one? Which exact model? We will be buying a few to develop for, so price is a bit of an issue."
Please, tell me you are joking ... Windows Mobile ?! Why the hell would ANYONE want to develop on that platform right now. Android and the iPhone have an SDK that is light years ahead of anything MS has. Not to mention, Windows Mobile phones are just not selling. For damn good reason too.
Sure, develop for Windows Mobile if you enjoy a shrinking customer base and no appstore which is basically free advertising. (Not to mention hosting, bandwidth and credit card processing fees [including charge back fees])
A good fraction of said installed base has money to spend. All of them have a track record of being separated from their money with only moderate effort.
That's some serious trolling, which is to be expected, but some idiots actually modded you to "+5 insightful" for it.
You've gone past the usual "people buy Apple products because they are suckers for marketing and/or bling" nonsense, which I'm sure you wholeheartedly believe, and you've added on an even more asinine implication that they give their purchase little or no consideration. Do so many people actually believe that?
And separating other people from their money is the primary motivation for going into any business
That is an extremely myopic statement. Plenty of businesses start with the primary motivation of providing a product or a service. Of course getting money for your efforts is a requirement to sustaining and growing a business, but your statement makes you sound like a third-rate MBA.