Smartphones platforms watch for 2010

While Microsoft has been using the term Smartphone for years, some people claim that the Smartphone era started in 2007 with the advent of the iPhone device, and we agree :)

The iPhone was THE game changer on the mobile arena, but it's been three years since it's release and the competition is starting to catch up. Finally looks like mobile OS are being left to the big software companies and hardware providers are trending towards sticking with the hardware part. It's a good sign the market is growing, stabilizing, and becoming more mature, less and bigger players. This is good news for content creators, means less and more stable platforms and API's, which make for a safer training investment.

Our technology watch for this year is with the following players: iPhone (of course), Google Android, and Windows Mobile 7.

Android got a lot press with the Nexus One release, and I've read several tweets saying good things about it, it's definitely within our scope of interest, and we may do some investment there, if only to compare it, and borrow ideas. It's also true that the app store replica is not quite working as expected.

Regarding Windows Mobile 7, we are very excited with the news that are being spilled all over that it will support both XNA & Silverlight as programming platforms, enabling us, and all the MSFT developers's community to reuse knowledge and skills with it. We will start playing with this platform as soon as it becomes available on a beta version (RTM is scheduled for april). If WinMo7 deliver's on time and scope, the forecast is an application store that will get populated fast, and to be honest we would love a piece of that pie.

(this post is the fifth in a series titled technology watch for 2010)