Traditional perception forces to think that there would soon be a disaster for developers in Smartphone application development industry. The threat is mobile fragmentation. Large development houses support four absolutely different mobile platforms: iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone. How can they do that if there are more small and medium sized enterprises than giant organizations? Small and medium enterprises can hardly divide their mobile application development budget into four or more parts? It seems impossible and undesirable. Does it mean that mobile application development industry is proceeding towards a dead zone?
But this time, traditional perception seems to be excessively stressed. Nothing wrong is going to happen because of mobile fragmentation. In fact, it is good for you as an enterprise.
Do you know how many iOS apps have been published so far? If you do not know then the number is 50 million or even more than this. How would your app survive in such giant ocean? Only huge marketing budget or an extremely good luck can work here. Let's take an example of Amazon's Kindle Fire. Do you know that it works on highly customized Android? It is a small platform with a niche within another. You can hardly match Kindle Fire's platform with the platform of a common Android Smartphone. It is fragmented, but it is actually a positive aspect too. There are not many apps in the Amazon's Kindle Fire app store. It provides big opportunity to apps to get better position.
Microsoft is paying developers hundreds of thousands of dollars to port their apps over to Windows Phone OS. Many developers have showed no interest in Windows Phone application development but that lack of interest may become big break to other developers. Fragmentation gives more opportunities and your apps have more chances of getting installed and used.
International Telecommunication Union says that there are currently about 6 billion mobile users across the world. Many of them have or will soon have Smartphone like Android, iPhone, or Blackberry. Just imagine if all the Smartphone are running on similar OS. It is too boring to imagine like this. Will your app ever be noticed among 6 billion users who have a Smartphone running on similar OS? The answer is no. Fragmentation in operating systems gives the separate groups of users. Android has become gigantic, iOS is already gargantuan, Windows Phone is all set to fly high with the support of Nokia and Blackberry still has about 90 million users worldwide. Fragmentation adds survival factor to every entity whether it is you or a mobile manufacturer company.
Fragmentation also helps you easily choose a target market. Diversity or what we say fragmentation in mobile market gives a lot of options. Many apps quickly become popular on one platform but nobody respond to them when they are published on others. It helps you easily decide your target audience.
So, mobile fragmentation is good for all the parties, e.g. mobile manufactures, mobile application development firms, enterprises and individual users.
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