Last Thursday (February 11th), our tenth IGI meetup took place in our usual downtown Reykjavik location. The main speaker was Ernir Erlingsson from Ymir Mobile, who had an interesting talk about mobile development. Ernir has very good knowledge and years of experience in development for phones. His talk inspired lively discussions.
Ernir made an interesting comment on how J2ME blew the opportunity to own the mobile application businesses. They had the right technology at the right time, but didn’t make it easy for people to download and get apps. This is what Apple did with the iPhone. Furthermore, J2Me never got over compatibility issues. Developing for the iPhone has the advantage of a single hardware.
Compatibility issues are something the Android is facing and some people at the meetup argued that Google is only facing problems and will not be successful. Mobile development seems to be a hot sensitive topic since there was a lively debate on Android and iPhone. Clearly, Android and Apple are using different approaches.
I admired Ernir for his attitude to mobile development. What counts is making solutions for hand-held devices, regardless of what device and what technology. If you are in the mobile development, it’s not about choosing between iPhone, Android or whatever else. It’s about delivering mobile solutions.
Although the session started with some technical problems, such as a missing projector, it was a very informative evening. It was also useful since I had a lecture at Reykjavík University the following day covering mobile solutions.