4 Shots of Espresso

Does your company already have a web application that would make a stellar mobile app, but you are concerned about the investment to produce the product? This investment can seem daunting and prohibitive as it can require:

• Mobile engineers specializing in one or several mobile platforms: Android (Dalvik Java), iPhone (Objective-C, C++), RIM (Java, J2ME), Palm WebOS (C++, JavaScript, HTML, AJAX) and Symbian (C++)
• UI designers familiar with cross-platform mobile conventions
• Retooled services for mobile
• Extensive QA process to identify and treat a motley collection of platform specific bugs
• Constant monitoring of OS updates and bug fixes
• Mobile marketing initiatives
• Monitoring new distribution channels
• Evaluating the impact on user life-cycle
• Updated business case and P&L estimates

I am sure that I have missed some other reasons investing in mobile applications can appear daunting, but ultimately the point is that this type of investment poses a significant risk. If your company is approaching this decision it might consider using a development framework to reduce expenses by condensing programing language requirements, increasing QA consistency, and reducing impact on the current system architecture.

One opensource framework I have worked with in the past, and enjoyed, is PhoneGap. It enables products to be delivered on many mobile devices with a singular code base. Of course there are UI differences that must be accounted for between mobile platforms so that applications look, act, and feel as users expect them to. Using a PhoneGap type framework significantly reduces product complexity, speeding time to market and reducing costs.

Here’s a brief video description of the platform and how to get up and running. The video features Jeremiah Cohick and was produced by Digital Dandelion.

Even though PhoneGap was a great solution for this project it may not be the best alternative for every mobile application. The deciding factor here is how much your application’s use of device inputs (e.g. Accelerometer, GPS, Camera, Compass) will stray from typical use cases. Even if you don’t end up using this or a similar framework, the initial investigation is worth the time.

For more information: PhoneGap | Sony WebSDK | Mavericks Application Source Code