Mobile Application is a term used to describe applications that run on smart-phones and other mobile devices. Since its first launch, mobile technology has changed people’s lives. Mobile revolution has changed the economy and society. Mobile technology is evolving everyday. The hardware is becoming more and more powerful and cheaper, communication technology is evolving and hence more powerful software can be built on top of it. Mobile devices are truly becoming smarter.
For example, originally the mobile phone was developed as a communication device. These days along with its main use of voice communication people use mobile phones for checking emails, booking tickets, capturing and sharing photos and videos, playing music, playing games, locating nearest restaurants, ATMs etc, mobile banking, mobile TV and many more. Due to its extreme personalization, mobile technology has changed the Business-to-Consumer and Business-to-Business applications. Anything which has a mobile in it is a hot topic today, be it a mobile commerce, mobile TV, mobile banking, mobile games or mobile advertising. Mobility offers an attractive platform for software product vendors. Every software vendor wants their application to be available on the mobile device.
Mobile applications usually help users by connecting them to Internet services more commonly accessed on desktop or laptop computers, or help them by making it easier to use the Internet on their portable devices. A mobile application may be a mobile-based instant messaging client, mobile email client, music player and many other applications. It has further widened the field of e-business by making the same facilities available on portable/mobile devices. There is thus a large scope for developing the corresponding software.
Worldwide mobile service subscribers have already crossed 4 billion mark. According to world fact book total numbers of mobile users in India on March 2009 are more than 400 millions and in China the number is about 650 millions. According to TRAI, in India, 13.5 million new mobile users joined in February 2009. In India the number is expected to grow 750 millions by 2012. Since 2008 the total number of mobile web users is more than total number of PC based internet users.
J2ME is the dominating software platform with market capture of 40%. Its specification is created by Sun Microsystem. Apart from mobile phones J2ME is found on TV Set Top Boxes, car navigation systems, pagers etc. Other popular software platforms available for mobiles are
- Symbian - found on high end nokia phones,
- Windows CE - Found on Windows mobile
- BlackBerry – Found on high end Blackberry phones.
- BREW – QualComm’s platform for CDMA handsets.
- iPhone SDK - Apple’s platform for iPhone and iPod touch
- Android - Developed by Google and later Open Handset Alliance
Even though the mobile offers hardware and software support for developing softwares, the processing power, the memory, input and output capabilities are limited and hence application development for mobile is challenging. Secondly the mobile device characteristics are different than the regular desktops. Developer has to work in the resource constraint environment. They have to understand the mobile characteristics and their implications while suggesting the solution.
Industry experts say, this is just the beginning of the mobile revolution and in the near future mobile technology will truly revolutionize the society and the business. This is a call to all those who want to work in challenging and exiting environment and wants to become part of the mobile revolution.
