NFC, the buzzword everywhere, but what is the hype all about!!

NFC, short for Near Field Communication is a short-range wireless RFID technology that makes use of interacting electromagnetic radio fields instead of typical direct radio transmissions used by technologies such as Bluetooth. It is being predicted that gradually this technology will transform our mobile phones into a wallet loaded with payment cards from multiple sources including credit cards, health cards, loyalty cards and many more. As compared to its prior technologies such as RFID and Bluetooth, NFC is considered to be more intuitive, versatile and security ready, both with respect to technology as well as standards.

The NFC Ecosystem – Key Stakeholders

The kind of stakeholders involved in successful adoption of NFC are disparate & have to ideally come together to make this dream a reality. The diagram represents key stakeholders for successful implementation of NFC:

 

Some of the key challenges worth mentioning here include: consumer adoption, merchant adoption, standardization, and interoperability and last but not the least, the evolving business models such that the players/stakeholders are working with and not against one another.

The year 2011 was indeed pivotal for advancements in NFC. We saw the launch of Google wallet, the commitment of handset manufacturers and credit card companies behind ISIS and the cooperation of NFC reader manufacturers like VeriFone, which started building NFC into all of its new payment terminals. Payment gateway players such as Visa are also getting involved & taking the lead to explore NFC. Though currently there are only two cards that are NFC enabled, Citibank Master Card and a prepaid card issued by Google, but others are expected to follow soon.

NFC beyond Mobile Payments

NFC is way beyond mobile Payments. The general association of NFC with mobile payments is perhaps due to the fact that solutions from large players such as Google, Verizon came with solutions primarily focused around financial payments. This is however now true. NFC is way beyond Mobile Payments and has business opportunities across verticals, industries & domains. Some of the popular use cases could be:

-     In healthcare wherein the users have a health card which enables storing information about the patient’s health, billing & payment of insurance premium and many more use cases; 

-        In retail with smart shopping card;

-        Features such as exchanging personal information, virtual fingerprinting strengthening security

-        Mobile marketing; and many more

Challenges for NFC in 2012

The key challenges which we foresee for NFC in the year 2012 are:

1.     Lack of clarity to consumer

The consumers are still lost and confused about the complete concept. For NFC to be successful a comfort level needs to be created for the consumers and they have to be convinced about security of contact less payments via NFC. Also there are variety of devices enabled with NFC technology with no standards to set interoperability across devices & merchant kiosks. This will pose as the biggest challenge and the ecosystem will have to derive standards to see NFC in the year of 2012. The biggest concern currently is “All Wallets may not work on all Devices, all Networks & all Merchants”!!

2.     Market Battles

The market battle is ON! Mobile Platform’s are competing to leverage the first mover advantage, while service providers & merchants are competing to jump a leap ahead of their competitors.

3.     Merchant’s Dilemma

Merchant’s dilemma is “Which Wallet to Support”! Also they will need to make a huge investment in terms of upgrading their POS systems & kiosks to enable leveraging full capability of NFC technology.

4.     Profit Issue

Who is making the money, is the billion dollar question? Every stakeholder is trying to leverage as much as possible and be on the winning end. The point all the stakeholder’s are missing is, we all need to work with and not against one another to make this a win-win situation for all of us.

Future of NFC

We predict the future of NFC in years to come is extremely promising. This will however depend on how the relationship between stakeholders of NFC ecosystem evolves but all said and done, the key players involved will use all possible carrot-and-stick approaches to convince merchants to adopt NFC.

 

Irrespective of the challenges NFC will face, the industry will evolve with new standards to embed NFC chips into SD or Micro SD cards. We expect new type of NFC tags to store more data, NFC enabled SIM cards and SIM based NFC payment solution.

Endeavour recently hosted a Webinar on “Insider’s Insight into NFC” which provided much more details about NFC, its future & trends. The recording of the same is available here:

 

Also Read our previous post

NFC based applications making everyday life easier

Mobile weds Cloud - The perfect marriage?

Everyone in technology world is talking about Cloud & it’s perfect marriage with Mobile. Cloud computing has grown from a pie-in-the-sky vision to a major IT movement and is surely having an enormous impact across industries, changing the way we access and store data. But it holds special promise for smart phones & tablets, which serve as the gateway to our most important content.

The wants of Consumers, Enterprises, and Application Enablers!!

Today consumers & enterprises are looking for information to be available anytime, anywhere and without any restrictions on the devices being used. In such a scenario it was not the “Need being the mother of invention” but “Need being the motivation behind the marriage between Mobile & Cloud”.

From consumer’s perspective, they would like the ability to store and access unlimited media irrespective of the device limitations. Enterprises want to enable wide range of IT functions to enhance employee productivity and to keep them connected across regions thereby enabling seamless sharing of information, delivering services & effective collaboration. With regards to service providers & application enablers, they would want to build apps which are platform agnostic and which can be supported on multiple devices.

Lot of enterprises are moving on to hosted solutions over “The Cloud” and are deriving significant cost advantages. A typical example of such offering is “Enterprise mobile cloud device management tool”. The solutions assists the IT teams at large enterprises in remotely managing the mobile devices by setting policies, performing security verifications, creating enterprise level sandboxes as well in securing virtual areas within the device to segregate personal and enterprise data.

This reflects “Mobility + Cloud” is changing the way mobile applications are developed, acquired and used within the enterprise, or utilized by the consumers for accessing enterprise & personal information. Research from Gartner & IDC further support this fact wherein Gartner estimated “Cloud Software as a Service” to be a $9.2 billion market in 2010, set to reach $10.7 billion in 2011. Another analyst firm, IDC, predicted a $72.9 billion cloud services market by 2015, with SaaS offerings composing roughly 75 percent of that amount.

Are the Current Trends Interesting?

Cloud services utilized by enterprises make mobile devices such as Smartphone & tablets more productive with reduced cost, enabling enterprise employees to access data centre resources that previously were only accessible via desktops, laptops and notebooks. Mobile devices with their ubiquitous, non-stop wireless access make cloud-delivered applications, data, and services more relevant and more instantly available anywhere.

App stores have seen a terrific surge in sheer number of the applications available for. Thereby some of the recent app stores such as HiSpace have moved on to the Cloud which makes it easier to seamlessly maintain, access and synchronize the applications across the range of devices owned by the typical user or household: TVs, PCs, phones, tablets, gaming devices, etc. The developer community is also challenged with developing and constantly updating for multiple OSs, and numerous flavours of phones and tablets. The Cloud enables some consolidation of this work stream.

“Leapdrive” is a typical example of the way Cloud Providers are enabling content from the Cloud across various channels. The appication allows the users to remotely access, view, manage and share all their digital content as soon as it is uploaded to user’s cloud storage. All the multimedia – music, photos and videos – are available to the user while they are on the go. The solution supports streaming music and videos, access to photographs, files directly from the cloud space to the mobile device turning your mobile into a bottomless phone with access to “gigabytes” of space!!

Are we missing the iCloud?

Looking at the future, cloud will work its way even deeper into the consumer sphere beginning next year. The launch of iClould by Apple with iOS5 or better known as the iOS 4S , is essentially an admittance to the fact that iTunes/local storage/sync model is not acceptable in todays multiple device/content everywhere/web services world. After Apple’s iCloud, few other manufacturers are also warming up to the cloud storage and services. HTC was the first to kick of the cloud debate and Huawei is taking it a step further. Huawei provides cloud solution with a free storage of 10 GB in its new devices such as Huawei Vision & Mediapad.

Though application developers & service providers are considering the cloud as a much more compelling place to host one's applications with each passing day, Enterprises are evaluating Cloud with regards to few key challenges such as security & lock-in.

A number of open-source projects and products are now attempting to resolve the lock-in problem, but there's still a long way to go. Security, too, is the focus of much talk and a fair amount of activity from industry organizations, but it looks as if it might take a damaging breach to kick-start an industry-wide approach to resolving some core issues.

What lies in the future?

Consumerization of Cloud Services isn’t something that’s coming. It’s something that’s here.

As the mobility experts we foresee that very soon the browser will become “An Appstore” in itself and most of the consumer as well as enterprise applications will directly operate through the cloud. The advancements in network speeds and low cost Cloud Storage options will drive the integration of cloud and mobile applications thereby evolving cloud computing as the key. We’ll have people accessing social media and corporate apps from smart phones and tablets.

The Mobile Cloud will pave the way for the “Internet of Things.”!!

Our “10 Cents” on the prediction for the future of cloud & mobile’s marriage, is that they are going to live through this time of evolution and make it a “perfect” story. 

Endeavour is a specialist Mobility Company, providing strategic consulting and product development for Mobile enabling businesses in the Manufacturing, Media, Print, Healthcare, Consumer solutions, Telecom and Business Intelligence verticals. Endeavour has a strong mobile application development team on all mobile platforms in the market today, including, RIM, Apple, Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre, micro Linux, Brew. Endeavour is based out of Austin, Texas, Bangalore India and London, UK. 

Mobilizing the enterprise is imperative for businesses

It can’t be denied: Enterprise mobility is truly taking off. Powerful smartphones are becoming omnipresent, as innovations are happening in the tablets space thereby strengthening the foundation for mobile business applications and enterprise mobility. Mobile enterprise is a fertile field for business innovation, competitive growth and profitability. Organizations are considering mobile initiatives to leverage benefits such as:

- Quicker on investment

- Increased employee productivity

- Desire to interact directly with the customer

- More reliance on mobile information workers and tele-workers

2011 presents enterprises with humongous opportunities to address emerging trends in the enterprise mobility and telecommunications market. Key corporate mobility initiatives include supporting more smartphones, tablets, and other connected mobile devices for employees, deploying more mobile applications, and establishing mobility policies.

SAP has rolled out more than 2,500 iPad tablets to their employees, as they believe that iPad is a useful fantastic tool, not a toy. Wireless apps aren’t just about slings hotting birds or drinking virtual beers anymore. Mainstream business tasks from sales and marketing to customer service and consumer research are quickly making their way from desktops to smartphones.

In addition to mobility initiatives, there are emerging technology opportunities for service providers including unified communications (UC), video services, and machine-to-machine (M2M) solutions. Along with growing investment in these priorities, enterprises are increasingly requiring service delivery via as-a-service, cloud-based, and pay-as-you-go pricing and engagement models.

Enterprise going ahead with Mobility curve

People don’t treat Smartphone's the same way they do laptops, but these devices have become every bit as powerful. As an end user they would prefer having enterprise featured phone so that they can do online credit card payment and take advantages of mobile banking. Book movie, hotel & travel tickets while they are waiting at the metro station for the next train to arrive. Monitor their health & send the reports generated by the self health assessment mobile applications for diseases such as diabetes, asthma, and chronic illnesses to their doctors.

This is the consumer facing aspect of Enterprise Mobility, while the scope of Mobility within the Enterprise is humongous. Forrester recently released data showing 78% of information workers either use or want to use smartphones for work. So from a business perspective call of today’s time is the need for making the sales force truly mobile. Endeavour has built an iPad sales force application suite for a fortune 100 organization in the space of surgical equipment development. Through the app a sales person will be able to access any information when making a sale and a customer visit in an online as well as offline mode. App provides critical information such as Marketing Content, Clinical content, Product Specs, Tools & Apps. This solutions help businesses automate tasks such as inventory control, sales processing, and tracking of customer interactions thereby enabling organizations manage customer relationships better.

Understanding the impact of mobile technology on enterprises is compelling several forward-looking companies to internally start deploying mobility technology solutions into their systems across verticals such as Manufacturing, Retail, Healthcare, Education Insurance, Banking and Financial Services.

A famous retail chain in US envisioned delivering a personalized, convenient shopping experience and at the same time reducing administrative cost and increasing employee effectiveness. So they built an Enterprise application system for their store employees. The solution enables store employees to assist customers by giving product demos, enhancing their shopping experience & increasing the sales. Field Force Automation solution in Enterprise mobility has improved a field worker’s productivity by automating the collection and validation of field data and enhancing customer service. The sales representatives are mobile empowered to access CRM system to document sales call details, process customer contact information and verify distribution of product samples, all in real time. Even IT department can benefit from greater mobile efficiency. Giving systems and database administrators the ability to remote monitor performance from any location on the systems and services they are accountable for ensures increase in their efficiency & productivity.

mHealth is a very hot domain and we see with a tablet, a physician can look up patient medical records while making rounds, improving quality of care. Being a key player in enabling mobility in healthcare domain, Endeavour mobile enabled the EMR- EHR-Practice Management Software. The application developed for one of the client helps the physician, Nurses or Physician’s aid to view the patient details, past visit records, health summary and also would help to manage medication refills and orders.  App is so strong enough that it can assist in Managing Patient Schedules, Demographics and Maintain Patient Health Summary & Visit Notes. The app gives quick access to Lab Results, refill requests, facilitate internal Messaging, complete Audit trails & generates the needed reports and Dashboards.

A self-service human resource portal with mobile accessibility could reduce administration time and improve job satisfaction for employees. Clarity PPM Smartphone Application is one such app which implements the Timesheet module of the Clarity PPM’s enterprise project and portfolio management solution on the mobile devices. The solution simplifies workflow and enhances the productivity by bringing the concomitant benefits of location independence. The mobility solution helps user to access the timesheet module on the mobile device and to use the functionalities such as update, save and submit for approval. This mobility solution enables the top management and the users to save time in filling the timesheet and approving the same even while they are on the move.

Leading Business Analytics Software and Service Provider's have a challenge of getting access to uninterrupted business information & statistics to keep business goals updated. Endeavour’s Mobile Dashboard Application solution provides them with dashboards which help in knowing the pulse of the organization’s performance. Dashboards are created and maintained through an easy-to-use Web-based interface. All content is displayed in a role-based, secure, customizable, and extensible environment. The mobile client available on Blackberry & Windows Mobile has unique features such as app cache management, auto update and remote wipe off, search, alerts, support to multiple languages & access anytime any where capabilities. The application provides view to key performance and indicators assisting managers to make optimal on-the-spot decisions and provide leadership when away from the office.

The Inventory & Aviation industry is also heavily influenced by mobile technology. iPhone application Mobile Inventory Management  helps traders to monitor customer demands and can determine immediately whether the broken valve on the production line is in stock. With RFID tags on the spare parts allow inventory managers with GPS-enabled smartphone to not only verify availability but also determine exactly where (closet, shelf and bin) the goods needed are located in the warehouse. In United Airlines pilots carry iPads which have replaced hefty flight manuals and chart books. With iPad, they are able to quickly and efficiently access reference material without having to thumb through thousands of sheets of paper and reduce clutter on the flight deck.

These successful enterprise mobility case studies confirm the saying that, “the less connected you are to a certain place called work; the better is your productivity.” That’s not conventional thinking but that is becoming the truth as more and more people go mobile and more and more devices are equipped for mobile connectivity. We are seeing an amazing invention of Virtual smartphone Platform which moves smartphone data to the enterprise Cloud by creating a clone of all of the data and applications on the phone. The platform gives IT and end users real-time intelligence and control over smartphone content, activity and applications. Read more about this and many such innovations happening in Mobile cloud computing space in our next blog post.

 Endeavour is a specialist Mobility Company, providing strategic consulting and product development for Mobile enabling businesses in the Manufacturing, Media, Print, Healthcare, Consumer solutions, Telecom and Business Intelligence verticals. Endeavour has a strong mobile application development team on all mobile platforms in the market today, including, RIM, Apple, Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre, micro Linux, Brew. Endeavour is based out of Austin, Texas, Bangalore India and London, UK. 

Webinar on "Enterprise Security & Android Platform" held on August 25, 2011

The Webinar held on August 25, 2011 by Endeavour Software Technologies, on "Enterprise Security & Android Platform" emphasized on the importance of Enterprise security and the role that Android Platform plays in it.

Data and transaction security has become of paramount importance with increase in mobile application usage in enterprises. The challenges of the security issues faced have become a top priority in every enterprise. Businesses and IT departments are experiencing employees opting for Android phones as corporate communication tools over other Smartphone as they offer powerful apps and innovative hardware specs. 

The Webinar covered:

• An Overview of Mobility and Mobile Security
• Best Practices for Secure Software Development
• Android OS specific details with respect to the above

Enterprise Security and Andro...

We would also like to thank the participants for their enormous interest. The positive feedback received from the participants confirms that the Webinar was well received.

Android Application Development

Webinar on "Enterprise Mobility Strategy" held on July 21, 2011

The Webinar held on July 21, 2011 by Endeavour Software Technologies, on "Enterprise Mobility Strategy" highlighted the 5 Important Factors for a Successful Enterprise Mobility Strategy.

The webinar covered:

• Is organization’s mobility strategy ready?
• What should be considered for preparing the enterprise mobility strategy?
• Is the enterprise well equipped to manage multiple mobile platforms, tablet devices, face the fragmentation & manage those devices effectively?
• Has security been considered as a component in the strategy?
• Is the IT department ready and well equipped to manage the mobile applications?

We would also like to thank the participants for their enormous interest. The positive feedback received from the participants confirms that the Webinar was well received.

NFC based applications making everyday life easier

Endeavour is a specialist Mobility Company, helping organizations utilize NFC capabilities on Smartphones. Endeavour has been providing strategic consulting and product development for Mobile enabling businesses in the Manufacturing, Media, Print, Healthcare, Consumer solutions, Telecom and Business Intelligence verticals. Endeavour has a strong mobile application development team on all mobile platforms in the market today, including, RIM, Apple, Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre, micro Linux, Brew. Endeavour is based out of Austin, Texas, Bangalore India and London, UK. 

Imagine it's 2013. You walk into a store; pick up an electronic magnetic trolley. As you buy your groceries you put it inside the trolley.  Once you are done with your shopping the total amount will be flashed on a tiny device placed on the trolley. You take out your mobile, wave the device around and click 'pay'. But then, your Smartphone application reminds you that you are eligible for some discount at that store. It calculates the discount and automatically deducts the payable amount from your account.  The whole process is complete in a few minutes and all thanks to NFC.
 
NFC and NFC Forum 
NFC i.e Near-field communications a new wireless technology is slowly getting implemented into the mobile sphere. NFC uses Magnetic field induction to enable communication between devices in close proximity. It operates at unlicensed 13.65 MHZ. It’s based on RFID technology, and its open platform technology is approved by ISO/IEC global standard. NFC Forum was formed in 2004. The forum has defined 4 types of tag for operating mode for devices as: Pear2Pear, Reader/Writer & Card emulation.  

NFC applications going a long way  
NFC, makes it possible to not only use your phone to make purchases in a store, but ultimately replace a lot of other things you normally carry around in your wallet. Applications integrated with NFC enabled phones have the potential to replace hotel room key, business card, public transportation (i.e bus, train) card, concert, sports or other event tickets and also boarding pass for getting on a plane. NFC apps brings a future where your identification, be it your driver’s license, passport, biometric and/or insurance data will be accessible through NFC enabled device. Google Android NFC devices by touching can launch the game on the second device. Using a peer to peer scenario, NFC can also be used to sync devices, share mobile apps with your friends and transfer photos between cameras, smartphones or tablets.

NFC tags have already reached a price point where it is feasible to print off batches of NFC stickers that enable users to create special ‘short cuts’ that make their lives easier. For example, when a child gets home from school, he or she could touch an NFC sticker just inside the door that sends an ‘I’m home from school’ message to a parent. Older people with poor sight or suffering from arthritis could have NFC stickers containing friends’ and family members’ phone numbers saved on them, these could be stuck to the corners of photographs of these people and, when touched with an NFC-enabled phone, would initiate a phone call to the right person, without the need to look up phone numbers.

Restaurants would be able to serve up menus via passer-by simply tapping a device to a sign. Extending the payment option, Endeavour has developed the next generation mobile payment system application. It’s customizable for hospitality domain, where the customers could pay the restaurant bill using his / her iPhone. The application at the launch takes personal & credit card information which would be used to pay the bills. Bill would be presented on the screen with the details like item description and price, discounts (coupons) tax and total bill amount. There is provision to pay tip (could be by percentage of the bill amount or fixed amount) and the app would prompt to enter the CVV no of the credit card before submitting the payment process. The application also screens list of all the past bills and discount (coupons) details.
 
NFC Services beyond Payment
As mobile commerce emerges, companies like Google, Square, and Apple are placing their bets on some form of mobile payment where the users' smartphone becomes a credit transactional device. Google has teamed up with MasterCard and CitiGroup to produce Google Wallet. Google Wallet is a mobile app, it will do more than a regular wallet ever could. One would be able to store credit cards, offers, loyalty cards and gift cards. When you tap to pay, your phone will also automatically redeem offers and earn loyalty points for you.  US outlets of Starbucks internationally known for its coffee has come out with apps for Android, iPhone and BlackBerry that allow users to pay using their mobile phones at its outlets. The app basically links to a customer's existing Starbucks account through data connection and deducts the amount from it once he has decided to pay using the mobile phone. Silicon Valley startup Naratte claims can do roughly the same thing without adding a chip to the handset. Naratte introduced Zoosh, a technology that lets phones exchange transaction information via inaudible sound waves. Zoosh could also be used for transactions between two handsets, including social transactions such as becoming connected on a social-networking service or exchanging contact information.
  
2011 will be flooded with NFC devices
As Nokia demoed recently using N9, NFC can allow cell phones to pair with peripherals like speakers or Bluetooth headsets just by coming in contact with them. There is a possibility that the next Xperia range of smartphones from Sony Ericsson will have NFC chip in them. Nokia expected to ship a handful of devices with NFC chip in them by the end of this year. The iPhone 5 with NFC would be one of the most high-profile devices that would try to replace wallet and push mobile payments. Android's devices with gingerbread 2.3.3 has full NFC support where Google has added new capabilities for developers, including updates to the API that now allow for both reading and writing to standard NFC tags. It also has advanced Intent dispatching that gives apps more control over how/when they are launched when an NFC tag comes into range. Blackberry is not behind the race, NFC-enabled BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 smartphones based on Blackberry 7 OS support for both tag reading/writing and card emulation applications.  

Not so good sides of NFC, which is getting addressed
Now let’s take a second to think about how much cash we walk around with on a daily basis. Next consider the last time you wanted to purchase an item and you were unable to use a credit or debit card. The fact is we don’t see technological advancements have been made in recent years to adequately replace the flimsy plastic and magnetic strip. Lack of smartphone buyers, financial institution reluctant to take a massive risk, software security, likelihood of fraud and theft in the relatively unsecured mobile world are few of the hurdles NFC needs to overcome.

NFC fantasy of making life easier, has to really find answers in the coming months for - What rules, regulations and/or restrictions will be placed on the use of NFC technology? Will we have a situation where Visa’s are only available on Nokia’s or MasterCard on Android? Will we be charged severely or exploited by the owners of this technology? And what benefits do the pioneers of this technology stand to gain? NFC sounds like the future of mobile payments; yet we can’t throw out your credit cards. We would like to forget our wallet at home while stepping out just because we have NFC phones. One could have the world's best NFC technology, but they need to get this embedded in handsets, and retailers have to be able to process it, and consumers have to be given a reason to use it.
  

State of Mobile Operating Systems - June 2011

By Jayaraman Raghuraman, Endeavour Software Technologies, Inc.

This articles compares 5 mobile operating systems – iPhone, WebOS, Windows Mobile, Android and Blackberry on the current state of the respective mobile OS and their application development tools support. It indicates the pros and cons of each OS. Further it takes a view on the future of windows mobile and the potential of WebOS. A similar study was done a year back and the same can be reviewed in parallel to see how the platforms have evolved over the last 12 months. 

The 5 platforms are described and compared with respect to

 

  

iPhone and iPad

OS

Current Version. iOS 4.3 for iPhone and iPad

Base Framework. UNIX based kernel built on OS X. Runs on Apple’s A4 processors for iPhone and Apple’s A5 processor for iPad

Future Visibility. iPhone OS 5.0 release planned for summer 2010 with iCloud support and wireless sync features.

OS Efficiency. Very Stable OS. Optimum use of resources means battery lasts for around 10-12 hours.

Device Management. iOS 4 and above supports Enterprise Device Management through MDM 

User Experience. Apple leads this segment!  State of the art, ergonomic and user friendly. Support for multi-touch gestures and accelerometer available.

Web Browser. Based on WebKit, supports HTML5, CSS3 web fonts.  Quartz style smooth rendering and smart zoom features.

Storage. No external storage. Has Flash memory that varies from model to model. SQLLite and Core data services along with flat files can be used for application data.

Hardware Support.5MP back camera, A-GPS, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth. Accelerometer and Multi-touch Retina display for iPhone and 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology for iPad

Multi Tasking. iOS 4.0 and above version supports preemptive multitasking and select background services such as Audio, VOIP and significant location services.

Media Support. Video - H.264, MPEG-4 in .mp4, .m4v, and .mov formats;

                            Audio - in AAC, MP3, M4a, Apple lossless and Audible

Development environment

Tools and Language. xCode 3.x on Mac OS X 10.6, Objective C

SDK. Apple provides the iPhone SDK v4.3 for iPhone, iPod and iPad apps.

The SDKs are bundled with xCode IDE. Unlike other platforms, development is supported only on Mac OS X 10.6 and above. Core Graphics and core libraries offer developers variety of graphics functions. Open GL support is also available in the SDK.

Developer Support. All developer applications work in a sandbox environment. The OS restricts access to the device except few routine tasks. Developers cannot utilize the device capabilities beyond what is offered by SDK APIs.

The Objective C programming is relatively difficult. Prior knowledge of MacOS X programming is great help.

Application support

App Distribution. Available over the Air via App Store with over 150,000 apps. Private distribution can be done through the enterprise program via iTunes. OTA distribution for Enterprise available in OS 4.0

Enterprise Support. Limited support. Can entertain only one Exchange account, allows PUSH email and real time sync. Supports VPN networks.

Consumer Support. Huge number of applications available on App Store for consumers to download. 25% apps on the App Store are free.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Devices available

Current. Only one model with varied storage size – iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4G. WiFi only iTouch and iPads with varied device storage options. iPad1 and iPad 2 comes with optional 3G support.

Future. Only one device option will be available each for iPhone, iPod and iPad as is currently available.

Pros /Cons

• Very powerful API library for variety of touch screen features capabilities of iPhone. These include Swiping, Accelerometer, LBS – Use of GPS, Pinching, Split view and many more

• Lot of Development help available in terms of MAC tools

• People with prior Apple Development experience can pick up this platform very easily

• The OS is limited in terms of allowing developers to build background process, applications and increase the power of the capabilities. Apple has put in lot of restrictions on developers in terms of using the API in different ways than prescribed.

• Mobile Device Management with enterprise profiles having option to remote wipe and remote lock gives next level security to enterprise users when compare to the previous iOS versions.

• SSL VPN gives an option for security in enterprise data transfer.

• Over the Air (OTA) method of downloading enterprise applications is available with iOS 4.0 and above and iOS 5.0 and above will have wireless device setup and sync with iTunes library. This was the feature lacking with MDM.

• iMessage application gives an option to exchange messages between iOS user who will have iOS 5 and above OS running. It’s direct competition to BB messenger, which made a huge space in enterprise domain.

• iCloud with iOS 5 gives a way to keep all the enterprise data in the cloud even though device is lost.

• Multi-tasking – iPhone OS 4 and above supports multitasking but very limited.

• In a way, this is a closed platform, as if you need to build applications to run on various mobile platforms, they have to be rewritten.

• Enterprise Policy support should be more broadened. Currently many default applications cannot be really blocked or restricted.

• It is not possible to lock the device for one Enterprise application all the time, which is a most wanted requirement from many of the enterprise development sponsors.

• Air print is supported only for the group of printers.

Android

OS

Current Version Android 2.3.4 for mobile devices and Android 3.1for tablet devices

Base Framework Linux based kernel with core services written in C, C++ and JAVA libraries. It runs on many processor architectures – ARM, MIPS, x86, Power.

Future Visibility Upcoming Android OS code named Ice Cream Sandwich will be converging phone and tablet versions of the OS with single UI across all form factors.

OS Efficiency Performance, efficiency and speed are strong points of all Android smart phones.

Device Management SDK provides device administration features at system level. Different policies can be enforced like settings password quality, max failed password attempts, password expiration, device lock, data wipe, storage encryption etc.

User Experience Very user friendly. Support for Multi-touch gestures and Accelerometer, Magnetometer available at par with iPhone, though iPhone is a shade better.

Optimized graphics library based on OpenGL ES 1.0 specs.

Web Browser based on WebKit, supports HTML5, CSS3 Web fonts.

Storage Supports external storage. Flash memory varies from model to model. SQLLite and native data storage mechanisms are available for applications.

Communication SIP API’s Allows to add SIP-based internet telephony features. Also supports NFC, a short-range wireless technology.

Hardware Support Video Camera, A-GPS, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth. Accelerometer, Gyroscopes, Magnetometer and Multi-touch display with varying display sizes. Some features are device dependent.

Multi Tasking. Full multi-tasking applications can be written.

Media Support. Audio - 3GP, MP3, MP4, MIDI, Wave, Ogg, FLAC(Android 3.1+). Video - H.263, H.264 AVC and MPEG4 SP, VP8 (Android 2.3.3+). Flash 10.1 is supported in v2.2 and above.

Development environment

Tools and Language. Eclipse IDE, JAVA.

SDK. Google offers Android SDK 2.3.4, 3.1 and NDK for developers to write applications. For graphics and rich user interface, OpenGL ES support is available from the SDK and some custom libraries. SDK offers variety of emulators for developers to test, debug and run the applications during development. In build Unit testing tools.

Developer Support. Operating System offers full control of it to the developer application via number of low level APIs and programming hooks. The programming effort is average compared to other platforms. Prior knowledge of JAVA is must. Low level programming, however, demands specialized mobile development skills using NDK.

Application support

Android Market: Over 2,00,000 applications available. However compared to the app stores of other Mobile OS platforms, Android Market has a much higher % of free apps.

25% apps are free on the other app stores – apple, blackberry.

60% apps are free on the Android Market.

App Distribution: Available over the air via Android Market controlled by Google. Private OTA distribution is possible.

Enterprise Support: Limited device management capabilities. Supports VPN connections.

Consumer Support. Considerable amount of applications – 2,00000 -  are available for users to download free or at nominal charge. Wide range of device options is available.

Devices available

Current. Droid 2, Xperia, Nexus S, Samsung Galaxy etc. About 150+ devices worldwide.

Future. Multiple device options are to be available from number of manufacturers. This is one of Android’s biggest accelerators and something Apple will find hard to compete against.

Pros / Cons

• Open Mobile OS platform, with lot of emerging features that are needed in today’s smart phone.  Also enables various touch tone capabilities liked by people on iPhone.
• More than 150 devices by various manufacturers.
• Truly Multi-threaded, multi-processing OS. Developers can build lot of capabilities, not possible on the Apple iPhone platform.
• The OS contains a lot of emulator UI skins that enables a developer to develop the application for one set of screen sizes and intensity, but easily make it available on other screen sizes, sharpness without any development. This is huge for both manufacturers and developers.
• Many OEM’s are building net-books / tablets / other mobile devices based on the Google Android platform. Not sure how this ties with the Google Chrome OS.
• Android Market is the second most popular application store with more than 2,00,000 applications available for download. 60% of these are free. On other app stores – Apple, Blackberry, about 25% are free.
• The Android 3.1 OS is a state of the art mobile OS with features available on standard desktop OS and higher performance. More details available on http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-3.1.html
• Enterprise Security and other device administration features will make organizations to include Google Android in the enterprise. This adoption of Android by enterprises will increase in near future
• The biggest disadvantage of the Android OS is how they will continue to support the various OS / devices going into the future.  Also the vision for Android vs. that of Google Chrome in other devices other than mobile phones is not clear.

Windows Mobile

OS

Current Version. Windows Mobile 6.5. No major OS architecture changes since last 10 years.

Future. This windows mobile version discontinued . No more further releases.

Base Framework. Windows CE 5.2 based kernel with core applications build in Windows C, C++ and Windows API.

Future Visibility. Completely revamped Windows 7 is to be launched later this year. No backward application compatibility.

OS Efficiency. With full usage of WiFi, 3G, GPS and bright display the battery lasts for 5-7 hours.

Device Management. Support for enterprise level device management is available. Exchange Active Sync is available for PUSH emails.

User Experience. Conventional Graphical User Interface. No support for multi-touch gestures and Accelerometer available yet. Windows 7 may have support for these. Windows Mobile certainly lags way behind competition here.

Web Browser. Internet Explorer, Relatively primitive web browser. Supports Flash Lite 3.1. Third party browsers such as Opera are available for download.

Storage. Supports external storage. Flash memory varies from model to model. For application data storage, SQLLite, SQL CE and many third party database tools are available.

Hardware Support. Video Camera, A-GPS, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth. Conventional GUI display with varying display sizes. Some features are device and manufacturer dependent.

Multi Tasking. Full multi-tasking applications can be written.

Media Support. MP3, ASF, WMA, WMV

Development environment

Tools and Language. Visual Studio v6.0, .Net  2008. Embedded Visual C++, Visual C++, and Visual C #.net. Windows 7 uses XNA framework and Silverlight.

SDK. For applications development, Microsoft offers the Windows Mobile SDK bundled with its Visual Studio all in one tool. For graphics functions custom OpenGL ES libraries are available. SDK offers generic emulators to use during development for testing the apps.

Developer Support. Operating System offers full control to the developer. Though low level programming needs specialized mobile development skills. Given the developer community exposure to Microsoft technologies, the learning curve is very shallow.

Application support

Windows Mobile Market Place. Less than 1500 apps. This is a major hurdle for Windows Mobile. However there are number of 3^rd party app stores such as Handango which have over 20,000 windows mobile apps.

App Distribution. Available over the air via Windows Market Place controlled by Microsoft. Private OTA distribution can be done without too much trouble.

Enterprise Support. Available. Device Management Capabilities available through Sync functions and third party software.

Consumer Support. Considerable amount of applications are available for users to download free or at nominal charge on various forums. Wide range of device options is available.

Devices available

Current. Many devices are available. Multiple phone models from variety of manufacturer are available. E.g. HP, Motorola, Palm, HTC etc.

Future. Multiple device options are likely to continue to be available from number of manufacturers. Windows Mobile 7 holds the key to the future.

Pros / Cons

• Based on popular .NET developer tools. Supports MS tools including Active Directory, Exchange ,etc  easily.
• OS was not upgraded for a long time , for over 6 years,   and did not support the various rich features available in Android, iPhone, etc. Microsoft waited for a long time to revamp the entire Mobile OS platform. Now, with Windows Mobile 7, people are waiting to see how it has changed. However, none of the apps that exist today will run on WM7, it is not backward compatible.
• Microsoft did not impose enough standard on how manufacturers will build devices using their OS. Hence applications built on one device usually causes developer a lot of problems to support on other devices. This increases the cost of supporting various platforms.
• The OS is not free.  Device manufacturers have to pay a license fee on each device running the OS.

·       Existing applications are not compatible from Windows phone 7

Windows Phone

OS

Current Version. Windows Phone 7.1 called as Mango.  Launched on October 21, 2010. The new mango version has lot of new features like skydriver (Cloud storage) ,

Base Framework. Windows CE 7 based kernel with core applications build in Windows C, C++ and Windows API.

Future Visibility. Multitasking, IE9 (including GPU acceleration), Twitter, GPU acceleration, People hub, SkyDrive syncing of Office documents

Nokia has partnered with Microsoft for next generation Windows Phone devices.

OS Efficiency. Dual Core Support (SMP, ARMv6), WIFI Positioning System, IE7, DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance), Cellcore, Bluetooth 2.1

Device Management. Support for enterprise level device management is available. Exchange Active Sync is available for PUSH emails.

User Experience. Conventional Graphical User Interface. Support for multi-touch gestures and Accelerometer available. XNA Orientation, Microsoft’s game platform supporting both 2D sprite-based and 3D graphics with traditional game-loop architecture.

Web Browser. Internet Explorer, Relatively primitive web browser. Supports Flash Lite 3.1 and Silverlight

Storage. Supports external storage. Flash memory varies from model to model. For application data storage, SQLLite, SQL CE and isolated storage in the application space

Hardware Support. Video Camera, A-GPS, GPU, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth. Conventional GUI display with varying display sizes. Some features are device and manufacturer dependent.

Media Support. MP3, ASF, WMA, WMV

Development environment

Tools and Language. Visual Studio Net 2010. Visual C #.net. XNA framework and Silverlight.

SDK. For applications development, Microsoft offers the Windows Phone developer tools compatible only with Visual Studio 2010l. For graphics functions XNA libraries are available. SDK offers generic emulators to use during development for testing the apps.

Developer Support. Operating System application layer to the developer to develop and run the application. Given the developer community exposure to Microsoft technologies, the learning curve is very shallow.

Application support

Windows Phone Market Place. More than 1500 apps. This is a major hurdle for Windows Phone.

App Distribution. Available over the air via Windows Market Place controlled by Microsoft. Private OTA distribution can be done without too much trouble.

Enterprise Support. Available. Device Management Capabilities available through Active Sync and Push Notification

Consumer Support. Considerable amount of applications are available for users to download free or at nominal charge on market place. Wide range of device options is available.

Devices available

Current. Many devices are available. Multiple phone models from variety of manufacturer are available. E.g. HTC, Nokia.

Future. Multiple device options are likely to continue to be available from number of manufacturers. Windows Phone 7 holds the key to the future.

Pros / Cons

• Based on popular .NET developer tools. Supports MS tools including Active Directory, Exchange, etc easily.
• There is no backward compatibility, As this is newly introduced. Supports the various rich features available in Android, iPhone, etc. Microsoft waited for a long time to revamp the entire Mobile OS platform. Now, with Windows Phone 7.
• Microsoft did impose enough standard on how manufacturers will build devices using their OS. This increases the cost of supporting various platforms. 
• Multi Tasking applications can be written, but very limited.

• The OS is not free.  Device manufacturers have to pay a license fee on each device running the OS.

Web OS

OS

Current Version.  WebOS v2.0 The most developer friendly OS ever!  The new beta version got released recently

Future Visibility. webOS 3.0 release planned for summer 2010 with iCloud support and wireless sync features.

HP’s WebOS 3.0 features a neat notification system, along with the ability to multitask with a card-based method to switch between open apps, group related tasks in a stack of cards, and flick apps off with a simple finger gesture.

Recently HP has taken a step forward with “Enyo Framework” which replaces with Mojo. With this change HP expect some of highlighted features like Faster performance, Hardware acceleration, Browser based development and so on.

Base Framework. Monolithic Linux based kernel with proprietary components developed by HP (Palm). Runs on ARM processors.

Future Visibility. Recent takeover by HP might define a clearer roadmap in the next quarter.

OS Efficiency. Open OS. Very efficient in handling multiple tasks with proper utilization of the resources such as WiFi, 3G, GPS makes for longer battery life.

Device Management. Support for enterprise level device management is optionally available. Exchange Active Sync is available for Push emails.

User Experience. At par with iPhone/Android. Multi touch gestures and support for Accelerometer are available.

Web Browser. WebKit based browser with support for HTML5 and CSS 3 standards.

Storage. OS Supports external storage. None of the current devices have it though. For the application data storage SQLLite is available.

Hardware Support: Video Camera, A-GPS, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, Slide Out or Candy Bar Keyboard (QWERTY). Has Accelerometer and multi touch gesture touch screen. Inductive charging support available.

Multi Tasking: Full multi-tasking applications can be written.

Media Support. Audio formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV; Video formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264

Development environment

Tools and Language. Eclipse IDE, JavaScript, HTML

SDK.  WebOS SDK  is available to developers. Developers use Ares for UI building with webOS mojo Framework SDK underneath. For the plug-in application development, WebOS PDK is available. The SDK also offers various emulators to be used for the development testing and debugging.

Developer Support. Operating System offers full control of it to the developer application via number of low level APIs and programming hooks. Web developers may easily develop programs. No specific knowledge on Mobile development is necessary.

Application support

App Distribution. Available over the air via Palm App Catalog controlled by Palm. The private OTA distribution can be done. Code Signing is mandatory.

Enterprise Support. Available. Device Management Capabilities available through Sync functions and third party software.

Consumer Support. Limited. Device hardware options available in the market are very limited.

Devices available

Current. HP Pre, HP Pre2, HP Pre3, HP Pixi, Pixi plus Tablets : HP Touchpad

             

Future.  No clear roadmap available. However indications are that HP WebOS tablet is one way in which HP is looking to use WebOS.

Pros / Cons

• Based on very popular web development kit and JavaScript. Makes it easy for web developers to learn this new platform.
• HP will probably announce a variety of devices, thus spreading the adoption of WebOS as a new platform. This will probably compete with Android and Windows Mobile as an OS options available to device manufacturers. There is also a school of thought which suggests that by October 2010, Web OS is headed for the HP WebOS Tablet. 
• The upcoming released of HP Touch pad webOS 3.0 is expected to be released in 2nd quarter. We have to wait and touch for usability and performance related information.

• The WebOS was taken up initially by lot of developers and development organizations, but the interest waned due to lack of devices running the OS. A resurgence is likely now that HP will spend on ensuring that developers get the necessary support for the platform                                                                                                                                                                          
               

Blackberry

OS

             

Current Version.  Blackberry 6.0, Future Release:  Blackberry 7.0

Base Framework.  RIM proprietary OS, Java development Framework.

Future Visibility. Blackberry 7.0 and Blackberry Playbook.

Also the new Blackberry Tables runs on QNX® Neutrino® RTOS platform. Blackberry aims to integrate with QNX platform for upcoming Smartphone’s. The Playbook can run all Blackberry and Android Applications too.

OS Efficiency.. Very efficient in handling multiple tasks with proper utilization of the resources such as WiFi, 3G, GPS makes for longer battery life.

Device Management. Fully functional enterprise support is available using BES. Also can be integrated with Microsoft’s exchange server.

User Experience. Not so good as the iPhone/Android, however with the new 6.0 OS the User experience has improved significantly.

Web Browser. From Blackberry OS version 6.0 & above has fully functional support for HTML5

Storage. OS Supports external storage. For the application data storage SQLLite is available.

Hardware Support. Video Camera, A-GPS, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, Slide Out or Candy Bar Keyboard (QWERTY). Has Accelerometer and multi touch gesture touch screen. Inductive charging support available.

Multi Tasking: Full functional multi-tasking applications can be written.

Media Support. Audio formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV; Video formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264

Development environment

Tools and Language: Eclipse IDE, JAVA, Blackberry JDE.

SDK. JDK 4.3, 4.5, 4.7, 5.0 and 6.0, 6.2(7.0)

Developer Support. Operating System offers full control of it to the developer application via number of low level APIs and programming hooks. The programming effort is average compared to other platforms. Prior knowledge of JAVA is must. Low level programming, however, demands specialized mobile development skills using NDK.

Application Support

                App distribution. Over the air via Blackberry App Store. Private OTA distribution is also possible.

                Enterprise support. Complete support managing the entire MDM model is available.

 Supports VPN connections.

Consumer support. Considerable amount of applications  are available for users to download free or at nominal charge. Wide range of device options is available.

Devices Available

                Current: Curve, Pearl, Bold, Storm, Tour, Storm 2, Bold 2, Torch, Blackberry Playbook.

       Future : QNX Real time operating system

Pros / Cons

• Blackberry is a popular enterprise device; it provides lot flexibility to develop application on the low level.
• Features like GPS, Wi-Fi, Multi tasking are more advantageous for developers
• For the past one year, Blackberry has changed its strategy to focus on consumer market. The new release of Blackberry OS 7 and Playbook has boosted the blackberry in consumer market. However it is very early stage to predict. It has still long way to go.
• Blackberry has  lot of devices, developing application and make it compatible for all those devices is a huge task for the developers

Trends

2010—except for Microsoft, which saw a 20.3 percent decline.

Data source: Gartner

The clear winners are iPhone and Android. Android more so – a growth of 800%YoY – backed by multiple carriers, buoyed by strong marketing campaigns. It is almost given that both of these will catch up with Blackberry in too for a horizon.

In the US, Android (28%) has already raced to the 2^nd spot displacing iPhone OS(21%). RIM (36%) continues to be number one.

Phones grow, Smartphone even more.

Overall, the global mobile phone sales totaled approx 315 million units in Q1 2010 – a 17 percent increase over Q2 2009.

Smartphone sales to end-users reached 54.3 million units - an increase of 48.7 per cent from the first quarter of 2009.

Worldwide Smartphone Operating System 2011 and 2015 Market Share and 2011-2015 Compound Annual Growth Rate 

Operating System	2011 Market Share	2015 Market Share	2011-2015 Unit CAGR
Android	38.9%	43.8%	23.7%
BlackBerry OS	14.2%	13.4%	18.3%
Symbian	20.6%	0.1%	-68.8%
iOS	18.2%	16.9%	17.9%
Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile	3.8%	20.3%	82.3%
Others	4.3%	5.5%	27.6%
Total	100.0%	100.0%	20.1%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, June 9, 2011.

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 1Q11 (Thousands of Units)

Company	1Q11  Units	1Q11 Market Share (%)	1Q10  Units	1Q10 Market Share (%)
Android	36,267.8	36.0	5,226.6	9.6
Symbian	27,598.5	27.4	24,067.7	44.2
iOS	16,883.2	16.8	8,359.7	15.3
Research In Motion	13,004.0	12.9	10,752.5	19.7
Microsoft	3,658.7	3.6	3,696.2	6.8
Other OS	3,357.2	3.3	2,402.9	4.4
Total	100,769.3	100.0	54,505.5	100.0

Source: Gartner (May 2011)