A Global Market Assessment on mobile technologies has been recently published by VDC. About the report...

This study covers the worldwide market for the mobile software stack. Specifically, our research efforts focused on the market for three types of mobile software stack elements:

Operating Systems (OS) - Including commercial application operating systems and real-time operating systems (RTOS).

Application Frameworks - Including Java services, browser-based frameworks and other application framework platforms.

Mobile Middleware/Utilities - Including security, device management, provisioning and other mobile utilities.

Mobile devices are defined as small form factor handsets (voice-centric phones, feature phones and smartphones), PDAs and ruggedized or application-specific mobile computers.

Report Highlights

VDC estimates the global market for commercial mobile software - which includes operating systems, application frameworks, java service and provisioning solutions - exceeded $560 million in 2004 and is expected to reach $1.6 billion by 2008. In addition, client/server-based enterprise mobile software, which includes security, device management and middleware, is expected to grow from $582 million to $1.45 billion.

No single operating system is expected to dominate the mobile market. While Microsoft, Symbian and PalmSource are vying for market share for higher-end smartphones and data-centric PDAs, lower-end devices are being supported by commercial RTOS and proprietary solutions. The wild card will be Linux, which is expected to account for a growing share of the mobile market.

Lowering the bill of materials (BOM) is the single most dominant factor driving mobile design decisions today. One approach has been the design of multi-core, single-chip platforms, however, enabling one OS to run the protocol stack, multimedia and applications remains a barrier. Currently application OSs such as Symbian and Windows CE are not yet sufficiently real time to support 3G devices.

Management of mobile software development time is a critical issue driven by increased cost pressures. Microsoft is emerging as one of the most predictable development platforms (determined by the difference between actual and planned development time). In addition, mobile applications developed on a Microsoft platform generally have a shorter development time than similar Linux, PalmOS or Symbian projects.

The prevailing connectivity profile for enterprise applications is the occasionally connected mode. Thin-client and browser-based solutions are not suitable platforms, as applications need to be able to function when disconnected from the host. Significant development requirements will be supporting applications that operate in an event-driven spontaneous manner and providing intelligent connectivity that detects network state changes.

For a brochure on this report see http://www.vdc-corp.com/mobile/reports/05/br05-15.pdf