IPhone …

As mobile application developpers confronted daily to the “device fragmentation” problem , we constantly try to anticipate what devices will succeed in the marketplace , and what this would mean for the hard to define “mobile platform” as a whole.

People may argue that it is not even sure that developpers would be allowed to target the apple iphone , the current buzz however suggests market appetite for rich gui user interface and large display sizes.

It looks to us that a meaningfull emergence of the iphone could be good news for microsoft , as this may make more attractive windows mobile , which is probably currently the most capable platform to ship rapidly good looking iphone like devices. Nokia and its followers shall wake up rapidly if they don’t want to be left behind , Nokia for its part has started to move with its Linux based internet tablets , but as far as we can anticipate it may have a hard time to leverage the open source GTK widgets that currently provide the gui for the maemo platform. This may eventually bring on the mobile scene Trolltech and its Qtopia system.

So to cut the long story short , we may see on the one hand a new round of the apple versus microsoft long ongoing competition , the rest of the world relying on the fins and prospectively the norwegians to get something else. Symbian may be the victim of this to be confirmed trend.