If you develop wireless or mobile applications, you've undoubtedly run up against the mobile platform question. For purposes of this discussion, we'll define platform as the software operating environment of the particular mobile device (such as a PDA or smartphone) being used. Note this is not exactly the same as an operating system - some platforms are operating systems or are based on operating systems, and some are independent of or even don't require an operating system, at least in the traditional sense.

There are two schools of thought as to the right approach for what a platform provides, which we'll inelegantly refer to here as "fat" and "thin". A "fat" platform is quite traditional in that it provides robust operating-system services including task management, file management, a graphical user interface, and lots of programming options. A "thin" platform is much more ad hoc - just what's needed to allow a program to execute, perhaps with a few bells and whistles, but mostly a small memory footprint. Note these two models roughly correspond to "fat" and "thin" clients, although one could, for example, implement a thin client on a fat platform. The degree of variability is tremendous, with the key decision being how much data one wishes to store and manage on the mobile device. More on this shortly.

Regardless, a platform provides the services an application needs to run. Some of the more popular platforms include:

Windows CE/Pocket PC/Windows Mobile 200 - Despite Microsoft's propensity for changing the name of this product on an irregular yet frequent basis, we think this environment eventually dominates the "fat platform" model, just because it's from that marketing machine known as Microsoft. And despite Microsoft's propensity for complexity, the company has an undeniable bias towards developers. Information on developer options and tools for Windows Mobile 2003 (the latest edition of their mobile platform) can be found here.

Palm OS

Farpoint Group

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