For Vertical Market Smartphone Apps, Is Webkit the "True" Dev Target?

"Over the last few days I've gotten a number of inquiries about smartphones and vertical market mobile apps, particularly as it relates to compatibility with Android, BlackBerry and iPhone. One reader, a Fixed Income securities trader, asked me about whether or not his new DROID could run the BlackBerry software for CQG, a popular live market data application.

"I explained to him that while Android and BlackBerry use similar programming languages — the BlackBerry uses a specific implementation of Java Micro Edition and Android uses Dalvik, a source-compatible but bytecode-incompatible clone of Java, the software applications they run are incompatible with each other and that some degree of porting work would need to be done to make CQG's J2ME application run natively on Android.

"This is further complicated by the fact that there are other major smartphone platforms, namely the iPhone, Symbian and Windows Mobile which all use completely different APIs for native application design, which make the BlackBerry to Android porting look trivial by comparison. So what is a vertical market mobile application developer to do?"

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