Programming for mobile devices
Tim: I’ve just been at the PalmSource Euro Devcon. Clearly devices are becoming more powerful, and the wireless aspect means they are always on. Will there be a RAD tool to target devices from Borland?
Dale: I think you’re going to see us stay really focussed on the Enterprise aspect of development platforms. I do not want to go down the path of building standalone applications. It is not interesting, because we don’t have a way to figure out how to charge for that. They’re going to deploy to millions of devices and I’m going to sell one software package. How much are you going to pay to have that development tool? We’ve been working with Nokia, working with Palm, we’ve not figured out a good way by which you’re going to extract money on a per-device level. So it comes down to making sure that whatever application the Enterprise is using, that they have the ability to target those environments. You’ll see us continue to build the extensions for the major platforms, whether its Symbian or Palm, as an extension from the Enterprise.
Nigel: We’ve looked at it very closely with Nokia, Ericsson, Symbian as well, and we see the way forward as adding mobile features, so as part of JBuilder you get the mobile set. With C++Builder it’s the same. Otherwise there is no way of getting the developer prepared to pay any sort of money that’s worth your R&D investment. It’s a bit like Linux in a way.
Dale: There are going to be people that will want to develop a game or something like that, and that’s what Metrowerks is for. But I don’t think people are going to write business applications for mobile devices.
Nigel: We’ve pushed hard now for the last 3, 4 years to try to get the independent developer base to write to the device. They’re not interested because they can’t sell their software. Development is done either by the big telephone manufacturers like Nokia, Ericsson, or by the operators like Vodafone or O2, who add services.
Tim: What I’m thinking of, for example, is a person at the warehouse door with a clipboard and he wants to replace that with a Palm or a Pocket PC.
Dale: They do that today with a wireless network, as opposed to a mobile network, and the application’s already running in Java. It’s all server-side development. I’m a thin client guy. I think that the market for building applications for these devices is pretty small.
Nigel: We’ve invested millions and millions marketing to this audience. At our Borcons, all the Delphi streams, all the JBuilder streams are loaded with people attending, and when you get to the mobile stream, the device stream, two people turn up. Developers don’t see a way of making money either.
Click here for the first part of this interview
Copyright Tim Anderson October 15th 2004