No doubt that smart phones are the next PC and their use will grow at exponential rate iPhone along with its innovative AppStore has changed the dynamism of this industry. Apple has rejuvenated once boring mobile platform with the introduction of platform that lets third party developers to write applications and eventually make money. With the success of AppStore, others like Microsoft, Nokia, RIM, Palm and Google are following or have taken some similar steps. So, one can expect do-or-die battle for the dominance of yet to grow and lucrative smart phone industry.

If we analyze the current events that have been taking place in this industry with the pre-mature phase of PC industry, we can find some similarities. The PC industry flourished with the introduction of GUI computers from Apple with the ability for 3rd party developers to write an application for. Prior to as well as after introduction of Apple OS, there were various vendors including Microsoft, IBM, DEC and so on offering similar services. But at last, as it normally happens in the information economy, only one emerged as the dominant force, it was Microsoft at that time. The success of Microsoft during PC battle was not just because of Microsoft Windows and/or DOS was superior to other available platforms, but Microsoft had and still have support of  wide array of hardware and software vendors. Apple and other vendors lost the PC war because of that particular reason.

Now lets come to current smart phone war. There are so many vendors offering or soon to be offering their own OS along with application platforms like Apple iPhone + AppStore, Google Android + MarketPlace, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile + Windows Marketplace, RIM + AppWorld, Nokia + Ovi and may be we will hear more in the near future. For now, as a developer it’s much easier to choose a smart phone platform to develop for (most in the US choose iPhone with Android trailing by long margin). Just imagine what will happen once all major vendors provide similar platforms after sometime. Which platform will you choose and what about interoperability? Certainly for large companies this won’t be a big issue as they have and they can afford to provide their applications for respective platforms. But what about those small developers and entrepreneurs and even for someone trying to get into mobile phone development? It will be just be crazy and/or practically impossible to offer certain services in all platforms.

I think we are going in somewhat wrong direction. With so much hype of iPhone and Android, along with other upcoming platforms especially Palm Pre, developers are forgetting about interoperability that the Internet and WWW have taught us and what Web 2.0 have delivered us. We are again going back to same PC era and writing applications for vendor specific platforms. Smart phone and as a whole mobile industry should focus providing their APIs respecting the concept of WWW. It’s true that browsers are available in almost all smart phones but which application will you choose when one is offered as a native one and while other being offered pointing to some URL like htpp://m.time.com or m.cnn.com and so on. In most of the cases, users will rightly choose former.

I am not saying platforms that enable developers to write vendor specific application is wrong but  one needs to fear that after sometime, it will be quite hard to offer applications for each and every platforms. But I am optimistic that one dominant player will emerge as victorious in the current smart phone battle and it will be the next Microsoft for PC and/or Google for Internet search.

My Bet: certainly not Apple even though iPhone + AppStore  provide the most superior platform for now