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The Magic Big 2

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No, it's not the Magic Big Two (Cho Dai Dee) card game played by millions of Asians around the world, but I just read an article on CNET by Eric Sylvers about how Mobile Operators (Carriers) are sick of having to support so many different operating systems. It went on to say that Vodaphone had "standardized" on Windows Mobile and Symbian, while DoCoMo "standardized" on Symbian and Linux.

It's interesting how competition usually weeds out the mediocre or the cultish and leave the winning two technologies/products/companies standing. For instance:

  • Symbian / Windows Mobile
  • iPod / Zune
  • Coke / Pepsi (or the other way around depending on your religion)
  • Republican / Democrats
  • Windows / Linux (OS X is cultish)

Ok, I'm over generalizing. :)

But you can't help to notice that even though we put in so much work to try to set standards and provide a "cross-platform" solution, it never ends up that way. There will always be competing standards, there will always be platforms that say they "cross" others better and there are those that say they're cross platform but don't really work (hint: java).

I think one of the best "cross-platform" application platforms is Flash. Runs very well in almost all clients, Mac, PC, Linux, IE, Opera, Firefox, Pocket PC, Symbian and more. Perhaps  because they focus on a small subset and make it work well. We've a lot to learn from this.

Anyway back to the original discussion about picking the top few OS to support, this is inevitable. No Mobile Operator in it's right mind will just pick one. Customers demand a wide variety of features and functions and the Mobile Operators will have to deliver them all or lose the business. This is the same for most ISVs we work with. They'll support Windows Mobile for a great productive development platform, cool tools but can't ignore the call of a bigger audience (Symbian). Even if when Windows Mobile becomes the reigning champion in deployed devices, there will always be two or three popular ones that Mobile Operators have to continue to support.

So my message to them is, DEAL WITH IT. Don't scramble. Prepare your development teams for the inevitability of having to support two or more very contrasting technology platforms. Plan your teams to compete with one another, YET build bridges between the two. Have their team leads sit down and plan schedules and functional specs. Have the team architects work together as a single architecture team for the company. Have them build the same application / service but see which one becomes more successful. That way, you'll have two teams trying to best each other at delivering high quality software that delivers a similar experience across the platforms for your customers.

By planning teams this way up front, you'll always be ready for changes in the business landscape. All your teams have to do is to go through the learning curve when taking up a new technology.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 12, 2008
    ok... not quite what I'm expected... I was looking for "Cho Dai Dee" and found you instead ... lol