Rhomobile, the leader in tools for enterprise smartphone applications, today announced Rhodes 3.1, the latest updates of the industry’s first and best native smartphone app framework.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--  Version 3.1 of Rhodes now enables organizations to deploy native Symbian and Blackberry 7.0 applications, adding to its existing platforms that include iPhone and iPad, Android, Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile, with others in development. Rhodes version 3.1 also enhances existing support for HTML5 user interface development and extends Rhomobile’s unique integrated development environment to the Mac development community.

    “A compelling user experience that is universally accessible is critical driving the adoption of enterprise-class applications”

“With well over 100,000 downloads over the past three years, Rhodes is the new standard for a modern mobile enterprise application framework,” said Adam Blum, CEO of Rhomobile. “With these extensions, we are further extending our leadership in delivering the most powerful cross-platform mobile framework available today. Our customers mobilize their apps faster and take advantage of market opportunities more quickly than possible with any other toolset or approach.”

One of the major smartphone operating systems, Symbian maintains more than 30% market share, as reported by both Gartner and Canalys earlier this year. Unlike the consumer market currently dominated by iOS and Android, enterprises are more likely to support existing devices, avoid costly device upgrades across their workforce, and to support “bring your own device” policies. With a cross-platform mobile app development framework like Rhodes, enterprises – even those with large installed bases of Symbian-based phones, can leverage a dramatically more efficient development and deployment model.

“Wireless and mobile smartphones and tablets are rapidly transforming enterprise IT,” said Peter Christy, principal at Internet Research Group. “In parallel, many enterprises are adopting a Bring-Your-Own device policy rather than buying separate company devices for the employee. All of this leaves IT with the challenge of quickly creating and evolving high-value applications that work across a diverse and changing population of devices. Rhomobile is clearly in the forefront providing tools to address these mobile application development challenges.”

To facilitate world-class user interface development, Rhodes 3.1 now bundles and integrates jQuery Mobile, a leading JavaScript library that allows developers to create HTML5-based user interfaces across all popular mobile platforms. Unlike other mobile frameworks and mobile web tools, Rhomobile fully supports advanced user interface libraries and provides tutorials on using jQuery Mobile, JQTouch and Sencha to accelerate deployment.

“A compelling user experience that is universally accessible is critical driving the adoption of enterprise-class applications,” said Todd Parker, lead of the jQuery Mobile Project. “We’re excited that the automated app generation capabilities of Rhomobile now include jQuery Mobile by default. This will help organizations rapidly deploy native world-class Smartphone apps that fully leverage the power of HTML5 and web standards.”

Finally, Rhodes 3.1 brings full support for the Eclipse-based RhoStudio and embedded debugging environment to Mac OSX developers. As announced in May, RhoStudio is an Eclipse-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which provides app generation, editing, build, and an integrated debugger and device emulator. These device emulators – unique to Rhomobile -- fully simulate a smartphone or tablet environment without having to install the native SDK or needing the devices themselves. The combination of the debugger and simulator results in fast debug/fix/rerun cycle times for development that were previously unattainable. Now developers working on Macs can take advantage of faster turnaround on mobile app development and testing than is possible with any other mobile development tool.

Rhodes 3.1 is available for download now free of charge. For more information and to download, go to www.rhomobile.com/downloads.

About Rhodes

Rhodes is an open source Ruby-based framework to rapidly build native apps for all major smartphone operating systems (iPhone, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, RIM, Symbian and Android). These are true native device applications (NOT mobile web apps) which work with synchronized local data and take advantage of device capabilities such as GPS, PIM contacts and calendar, camera, native mapping, push, barcode, signature capture, and Bluetooth.

About Rhomobile

Rhomobile Inc. offers the most modern and powerful enterprise mobility suite on the market today. At the foundation of their complete mobility solution is Rhodes, the world’s leading open source framework for enterprise mobility. Founded in 2008, the company’s award winning software has thousands of active developers and is ideal for independent software vendors, system integrators and enterprises of all sizes. Rhomobile offers a comprehensive, modern, highly adaptable, and low cost solution for today's smartphone app developer. Rhomobile, headquartered in San Jose, CA, is a privately held company with backing from vSpring Capital. For more information, please visit www.Rhomobile.com.