Mobile Application Development

Mobile applications are software programs that run on a mobile device. Typical enterprise mobile applications utilize mobile computing technology to retrieve information from a main computer server to the mobile device at anytime and anywhere. Moreover, mobile applications using the Cloud as the backend are becoming more and more popular.

The design and implementation of mobile applications is not as straightforward as desktop PC application development. It is very important for mobile application developers to consider the context in which the application will be used. From a business point of view, it is difficult for project managers to estimate the risk associated with a mobile application project due to the difficulties in comparing the various capabilities of existing mobile platforms.

Nowadays, the early mobile platforms like Symbian, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Linux and BlackBerry OS have been joined by Apple’s OS X iPhone, Android and recently Palm’s Web OS, adding a layer of complexity for developers. 

Mobile device platform refers to the mobile hardware device and its operating system and/or integrated software. For example, Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 OS is installed on a Dell AXIM X51v device.

Mobile application development platform refers to the combination of programming languages, general development APIs, and the runtime environment for that language on the mobile device. The mobile application development platform runs on top of the mobile device platform and provides an extra layer of software as a protection barrier to limit the damage for erroneous or malicious software. For example, the typical development software for mobile applications for Windows Mobile 6.0 is Microsoft Visual Studio 2005/2008 plus Windows Mobile 6.0 SDK.