You raise a very interesting point: Given that S60 and Windows Mobile can be used to develop core apps ‘pre-load’, they are targeted to OEMs/ODMs as much as external developers and should therefore be positioned where Maemo is on the chart.

I ‘ve given this some thought, and here’s my conclusions. I believe you are right to an extent. To get to the bottom of this I believe we have to consider the commercial intention and the technical capabilities of S60 and WM before categorising them as pre-load or post-load.
- Technically, WM for example has features designed for OEMs/ODMs, and other features designed for external developers. WM affords the developer with low-level functionality (although I would question if you can develop device drivers for most peripherals without add-on source code). S60 and WM also allow you to develop most core apps (e.g. Idle screen, PIM apps, browser shell, etc).
- Commercially, neither WM, nor S60 are designed to allow you to replace core apps, to avoid brand dilusion and control of the user experience (at least across most of the user journey). There are subtle but important obstacles in replacing some of these core apps. I understand that a developer needs access to hidden ABIs (binary interfaces) in order to develop an effective idle screen replacement for example. The UI flows from other apps are mostly locked and therefore whereas you could develop say an email app, it is not either a) the app that you get when you hit the ‘email’ menu, and b) it cannot be linked with other core apps in terms of the user interaction flows in and out of the email app. Windows CE and Symbian on the contrary, are *designed* to offer you that flexibility, and I would position Windows CE near Maemo.

Conclusively, whereas technically S60 and Windows Mobile CAN be used to develop core apps, commercially they are not designed to. This is why manufacturers are given access to source code for S60 and Windows Mobile to develop phones, whereas external developers aren’t.

Which is where the major difference with e.g. Maemo lies. Maemo can be used to build phones (if you develop the app suite on top). With Maemo you have access to all of the code (at least the vast majority which is released under open source license). Commercially and technically, Maemo is designed to allow third parties (developers or OEMs) to build phones.

Hope this makes sense – but I would always welcome a counter-argument

Andreas

So they should both be down on the same level as Maemo (since both even allow device drivers, etc. to be written).

That is the fundamental difference between these environments and, for example, Java on most phones.

started shipping only recently, so there market penetration is really lower than versions 1.1 and earlier. – Symbian OS has been shipped in 126 million devices (as of March 07) according to Symbian. This puts S60 at 60-70% of that figure. – Other application environments

internal vs external app environments

contains eleven of the best articles that appeared on the blog in the last year. The Print Edition 2008 contains excerpts from the following eleven articles, organised along several themes: Theme: Mobile software strategy: -Rethinking application environments

VisionMobile :: blog :: Rethinking application environments