Enterprise Mobility News this Week
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 John Gallagher, Sr. Public Relations Manager
This week there were three major announcements in the world of mobility.
First, Apple announced a new iPhone operating system on April 8. The new OS allows developers to write applications that take advantage of multi-tasking – good news for the enterprise, and long term adoption of the iPad. Then the story broke on Friday (4/9) that the new licensing agreement prevents developers from using cross-compilers like those found in Adobe CS5 (launched on Monday 4/12) to develop an iPhone OS application. Cross-compilers let you develop an application in Flash, JavaScript, etc., and port it to the iPhone. This is bad news if your company has made a commitment to one of these languages for your applications, and you would like to have the application accessible to an iPhone or and iPad.
Microsoft also had a press conference on Monday to announce the Kin 2. The new smartphone is targeted at a consumer audience, and reaction has been lukewarm at best. Harry McCracken at PC World described the new device as “All in all, I think Microsoft isn’t trying to take on the iPhone or Android so much as please people who are stepping up from limited “feature phones.” To be fair to Microsoft, the Kin 2 is being pitched as a social media device, and without support for Outlook, having even less appeal to an enterprise customer.
Finally, Palm announced that they are up for sale. Whispers in the industry suggest that HTC or Nokia are the more likely suitors, but folks are questioning whether Palm is worth a $1 billion plus price tag. It will be interesting to see this play out. I loved my old Palm Treo, and it was very sad day when it had to be retired due to a broken screen.
On a side note, I wanted to congratulate Philippe Winthrop for a successful launch of his Enterprise Mobility Forum last week. It is a great resource for enterprise mobility news, research and commentary and we are proud to be a co-sponsor.
Tags: Apple, enterprise mobility, iPad, iPhone, Microsoft, smartphone
