J2ME VS Android VS iPhone VS Symbian VS Windows CE

Admittedly I'm biased, but points in favor of Symbian are:

  • Is open source
  • Has by far the largest marketshare (45% or so) of smartphones
  • Runs on cheaper hardware than Android and iPhone (means volumes will go up significantly faster)
  • Runs Python, Ruby, Java and Web Runtime Widgets
  • From Symbian^4 will have a complete Qt stack.

There's several of these questions floating around on SO already... the most popular seems to be this one: what mobile platform should I start learning?

Quicky from the accepted answer over there (I edited a bit):

I think 3-4 platform have a future. But depends what platform do you like and how you like freedom in distribute your applications :)

  1. Windows Mobile
    • C++ or .NET
    • free distribution, just like normal applications or through market
    • You need a Windows PC to develop
    • proprietary
  2. Android
    • Java
    • Open Source
    • through Android Market ($25 one-time fees) or like normal applications
    • The platform is completely open source
  3. iPhone
    • Objective-C or Java (Developing iPhone Applications using Java)
    • through iPhone Market ($99/year fees)
    • You need Mac (Mac OS) for development
    • proprietary
  4. Java
    • J2ME or JavaFX
    • largely open source

My personal thoughts are: Symbian's dead; Windows Mobile will die, but take a long time; Android will become the standard in the next few years; iPhone will remain trendy in coming years, but NOT take be the biggest player; Pre/WebOS will maintain a niche market, but not be wildly sucessfull, Blackberry will decline, but still be around forever. I'd probably put my time/money into Android or iPhone at this point.


You can find everything about J2ME VS Android VS iPhone VS Symbian VS Windows CE in the below survey image:

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