Posts Tagged ‘Blackberry’

  • 04 Jan

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    The GIS Market Leader and Mobile GIS

    0

    ESRI is well known for providing professional GIS solutions from desktop to server. But they always struggling with mobile GIS. For a long time ArcPad was ESRI’s reference application when it comes to mobile GIS. ArcPAD tries to be the baby ArcGIS for mobile devices, with very limited functionality and cumbersome user interface. Of course mobile devices are very limited in their funktionality few years ago and the Windows Mobile platform is a still a hassle, but ESRI has difficulties finding their strategy for mobile GIS solutions both for expert and the broader community.

    With their new ArcGIS server platform and REST based APIs ESRI also realized a technology for mobile use. It is easy to embed maps and layers in different environments including mobile phones, PDAs, tablet PCs etc. The following video shows a more professional way to use ArcGIS mobile and in the second part of the movie a demo is given on the iPhone where Base Maps from an ArcGIS Server are visualized within an iPhone App.

    This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

    The demonstrations of new options for mobile workforces are based on ArcGIS Mobile 9.4, and will be available soon.

    Now the questions is will this strategy become successful?

    In my opinion ESRI has now a huge potential to gain ground in the mobile GIS world, also for a wide user group. Essential in my opinion will be the continuous development and extension of their ArcGIS Server APIs. For example it is expected to have direct Geodatabase read/write access with the JavaScript API in version 2.0, coming with ArcGIS 9.4. On the other side it is important to have easy to use client software for all major mobile platforms, including iPhone OS, Android, Blackberry, PalmOS and Windows Mobile. ESRI should provide “demonstrative” applications for different use cases ranging from experts (or data collectors) to “traditional”  Google Maps users. It will be very important to open up building blocks for application building on mobile Platforms (very important Android and iPhone OS) so that developers could design and implement their own applications based on ArcGIS mobile. It should designed like ArcObjects building blocks on the Desktop and Server.

    If ESRI can take this challenge for 2010 the GIS market leader will also play an important role in the mobile GIS sector.

    What is coming with ArcGIS 9.4 in general?

  • 15 Jun

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    Market Share of mobile AppStores by number of Applications

    1

    I have tried out to compare mobile application stores by their number of available applications. Starting with Apple mobile application stores have become very popular to download programs and games directly to the users smartphone. Now nearly every big player has launched a platform where different applications are hosted. I have compared platforms of the 5 major players in case of application variety:

    Name of the Store       Platform Company
    Apple AppStore iPhone OS Apple
    Android Market Android Google
    Palm AppStore Palm OS Palm
    Ovi Store Symbian Nokia
    AppWorld Blackberry OS Research in Motion (RIM)

    All in all it is not so easy to compare the total number of applications, because there are no official or correct information available. Most headlines give the impression platforms start with 10000+ applications, but if you take a closer look at different applications you find out that these numbers are utopian. By June 2009 there are good numbers about Apples AppStore. They provide about 50000 applications and games, where 11000 of these are free (~87 % Market Share). Android Market has nearly 6000 applications which is about 10 % Market Share. Palm claims to have about 3000 applications available, which is about 5 % Market Share. But I get the impression this number include also Windows mobile applications. Nokia has only about 250 application available for their Symbian S60 v5 phones (0.5 % Market Share). And Blackberry has only 15 featured applications listed in their online platform. I could not verify the total number of BlackBerry applications because therefore you need a BackBerry phone.

    Market Share by total number of Applications

    Market Share by total number of Applications

    In conclusion it can be said that the success of a mobile platform or operation system depends on the variety and number of application. It is a very easy equation that allows you to predict the success of an application:

    • The higher the amount of applications the higher the success of a platform!

    In my opinion big players in the smartphone market will be the iPhone OS and Android. It is difficult to say what will happen to Palm and the big looser will be Nokia (See also following article: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/26/nokia-ovi-store-launch-is-a-complete-disaster/).