I don’t know any businesses who like to gamble with their money. I’ve never heard a CEO say, “I’m going down to the casino to place half of last year’s profits on red.” You know why? Because it’s a terrible idea. Shareholders don’t take kindly to those types of business strategies.
Yet, this is the problem faced by companies trying to pick a mobile platform for their business. Right now, choosing a mobile platform is a gamble. It’s like a horse race…businesses are being asked to pick a winner, yet they don’t know who will win. They don’t want to spend time and money on a platform that might not exist in two years. Do you think iOS and Android are the clear favorites? The stats sure point that way, but five years ago, Palm and RIM were big players. Now, RIM is declining and Palm doesn’t exist. Who knows what the race will look like in another five years?
Some think they can hedge their bets and pick multiple winners. Why not just develop apps for the biggest mobile platforms out there today? Yes, that’s possible, but it’s a huge investment. You see, designing applications for different platforms requires knowledge of different programming languages. Apple uses Objective-C. Android uses Java. The list goes on.
There’s the crux of the problem. It’s not about hiring one developer to create mobile apps for every platform. It’s about using one developer for one platform, or hiring a team of developers for multiple platforms. You don’t want to go through the time and expense if one of those platforms will be dead in a year or two, do you?
If you’re struggling with this problem, I have a question for you:
What if you didn’t have to guess?
If there was another option that didn’t force you to gamble on a platform or hire new people, would you like to know about it? If so, I have some good news: Another option is coming…stay tuned…