Monday, February 14, 2011

What if two Turkeys make an eagle?

If you follow ‘Mobile world’ news like I do, you might have already heard about partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, and Google’s trash-talk in response – “Two Turkeys do not make an Eagle”.
Cut to one year back – when android itself was a Turkey, however, they pretty much turned themselves into an Eagle. If you trust in Gartner’s figures, Android market share has risen from 3.5% in 2009 to 17% in 2010 and it is on its way to 22% this year. See - http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1434613 .
Nokia’s Symbian has highest share so far and having seen a world (e.g. India) completely dominated by Nokia phones, I believe they will put up a pretty serious fight for Apple and Google.
What does this mean to us in Insurance industry, who are developing mobile business apps? I think, these developments make a clear case for ‘cross-platform’ development. Rather than, making an application specifically for iPhone or Android, it’s time to seriously consider cross platform development platforms. A hybrid approach with combination of common ‘Portable’ code and some sexier ‘Native’ features appears as a good balance that provides functionality with oomph.