Challenges for Mobile Developer

Mobile has become to a necessary in our daily life. More and more people not only pay attention to the performance, but the appearance. Printing on cell phone is your wise choice for the decoration of your mobile. With the cell phone printer, things went easily.
This is also a challenge for mobile developer. They can make the mobile into a mobile print. Recently I had an opportunity to attend a Vodafone D2C strategy briefing which brought out Vodafone initiative for the next three years. During this briefing Vodafone significantly highlighted the fact that despite the anticipated consolidation by European operators, the operators should focus on services other than the traditional voice based services so that they can generate greater revenue for themselves.
Besides few exceptions, many operators in Asia and other developing countries have still not been able to implement long term data services strategy, with the result their mobile play is still primarily focused on voice. The key factors which have complemented the growth of data services in developed countries are the increasing capabilities of mobile phones, faster networks like 3G and mobile applications that bring a rich user experience by changing the way people live, work and play.
They are always on a look out for a ?killer application? that can easily become popular among the subscribers and thus create brand loyalty for them. But from the mobile content developer?s perspective it?s not a simple task to come up with such an application.
The major challenge highlighted at the Google?s Open Source discussion event was the absence of standards for the developers in the industry. Optimizing these applications for different OS and broad range of mobile devices with varying screen sizes and versions remains the biggest problem for the mobile content developers. Even if the portability issues are resolved, distribution still remains a big challenge for the developers. It is the dream of every mobile content developer to get their content distributed through an operator. But the unending list of pre requisites on various issues of portability, certification and in some cases localization can turn this dream into a complete night mare.
There should be one organization that can set guidelines and standards for content development by consulting all the stake holders in the value chain. This will facilitate the developers to focus only on the core issue, which is to develop applications for the consumers that can add value in their lives. This thing is not as simple as it seems.