Which platform attracts Australian mobile developers?

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 14 December 2010 15:37

IT Industry - Strategy

Are Australian developers more interested in creating mobile apps for iOS and Android than Windows Phone 7? It looks that way.

Attendance at a pair of sessions at the YOW! conference for developers held in Melbourne this month suggests local developers are far more interested in Google's Android and Apple's iPhone and iPad than they are in Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.

Dragos Manolescu from Microsoft's Windows Phone Engineering team gave an overview of building Windows Phone 7 apps to a relatively modest audience. But the room filled for the next session where Daniel Bradby of iTribe and freelance developer Nathan de Vries respectively gave corresponding presentations for Android and iPhone.

As might be expected, Manolescu pointed out the Phone 7 allows developers to use familiar tools and frameworks, and concentrated mostly on the differences between desktop and phone development.



These include coping with interruptions (eg, when the phone rings or the screen is locked), working within the 10-second elapsed time limit for various operations, and power consumption issues.

For example, touching the screen causes a power drain in the order of 10mW, doing geolocation takes around 100mW, and making a network request and handling the response pushes it into the 1000mW range. "Everything has a cost, [so] be aware of those costs" while developing, he advised.

Other differences include making provision for a program to keep running while the device is locked (important for media players, route tracking apps and so on), recording data streams (eg from the accelerometer) so they can be fed into the simulator during testing.

What did attendees hear about Android? See page 2.