Steape – One development platform for five mobile operating systems

Remo Knops — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:30:57 +0000

In this article I will have a first look at a cool new approach in mobile application development for various mobile operating systems, developed by a company called Steape.

“Steape has developed a unique innovative platform, via which it is pretty easy to build (highly advanced) applications in native language for five of the most common mobile operating systems: OSX (iPhone), Android, Symbian S60, Windows Phone and BlackBerry.”

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR0LuVpvOE8

Each of this mobile operating systems has its own programming language, and every mobile operating system has its distinct set of unique features that makes the operating system the best choice for its end-users.

However Steape limits down the knowledge of each of the different program languages and makes mobile application development even simpler (at least in concept):

“The platform developed by Steape is available through a web-environment and is working with a so called ‘drag and drop’ user interface in the Steape web-portal.”

On the corporate website Steape has a demo video of the ‘drag and drop user interface’ of the web-portal to give you a sneak peak how the application development works in practice.

The more technical oriented application developers or people with a formal IT background would probably like to know more about the technology implications or how the web-portal architecture is build, and therefore you can download a Technical White Paper directly from the Steape website.

Concluding thoughts and wrap-up

I would like to start my concluding thoughts with the remark that I don’t have a formal IT eduction, and don’t work in the application development domain. Therefore I can’t value this approach from a technical perspective, but I will try to make some remarks from a business (development) perspective.

At first I like the theoretical concept of building an application on one platform, and transform the input of this platform into output code of the native programming language of the five leading mobile operating systems (iPhone, Android, Windows Phones, Symbian & BlackBerry).

With simplifying the development and applying a kind of automatic parrallel-development you can from a developer’s perspective significantly speed-up the time to market which saves costs and you can outperform competition.

Furthermore each of these mobile operating systems is bundled with a native application store, which increases the visibility of the application across the different platforms as well as it increases the number of cash flows via the different channels.

However will the Steape platform also hold for highly complex applications, which require interactions with remote servers or think about enhanced security features which can result into highly complex implementations. Furthermore you could also think if the intital user experience of the basic application idea, will hold and be as good on every mobile operating system.

I would like to conclude that Steape is an interesting platform that certainly has great potential and I truly like it in concept (from a business development perspective). I hope that some developers and people with an IT background can drop some comments and share their thoughts from a technical perspective !

WinMoDevCamp – Community Gatherings for Microsoft Windows Mobile Enthusiasts

Remo Knops — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:30:46 +0000

This short news item will cover the details of WinMoDevCamp, a pro-active initiative from Microsoft to reach out and really inspire the Windows Mobile developer community.

Back at Mobile World Congress Windows Mobile 6.5, together with two services -Microsoft My Phone and Windows Marketplace for Mobile- were announced. We know that Windows Mobile 6.5 probably will hit the market upcoming fall, and Microsoft is investiging significant time and efforts in setting up the Windows Marketplace for mobile, covered intesively here in a sequence of articles:

While different technical aspects like the payment mechanism, or the business center are covered in these articles. However we also raised some concerns about the entry point for starting developers and developers looking to move to this platform, which was also concluded by Paul Willen in the article: “Windows Mobile 6.5 Development – What about Developers?”

However yesterday mobilityminded.com received some great news from Brain Blank from FutureWorks PR, that in addition to the Race to Market Challenge, Microsoft is commited to directly address and support the Windows Mobile developer community: WinMoDevCamp

Arne Hess from the::unwired.net has written an article yesterday “Microsoft sets the stage for Mobile Developers with WinMoDevCamp for Windows Mobile“:

“Instead of just opening an app store and releasing a SDK, Microsoft is really looking to support and foster the incredible mobile developer community through educational events, contests and support. It’s a great opportunity for developers to break through on the early stage of something pretty unique and this is why Microsoft is making the developers the stars, helping to ignite some innovation – plus developers are able to get in on the ground floor of a unique opportunity with the backing and support of Microsoft.”

I think Arne Hess has described the goals and intentions of WinMoDevCamp pretty well and I think for young starting developers this is a pretty unique chance to build great applications for a rich platform. In the contrary to “Windows Mobile Creative Software & Game Design Contest” this WinMoDevCamp is not a single contest but a free series of Barcamp-type events around the world.

“The first one is set for Seattle on 19th August 2009 and more to be announced soon in Austin, London, New York, San Francisco, and Singapore. These camps will help bring the news to the developers and give them a first-hand look and valuable information to get an early leg up on the upcoming Marketplace.”

Are you an ambitios developer looking for a new challenge, than the WinMoDevCamp might be a great opportunity. Go directly to www.winmodevcamp.org or find additional event details at “upcoming things to do“

MobilityMinded » Development

Steape – One development platform for five mobile operating systems

Concluding thoughts and wrap-up

WinMoDevCamp – Community Gatherings for Microsoft Windows Mobile Enthusiasts