[mono-android] [Monodroid] Other Android Mono ports

[Natalia Portillo]

Hi,

El 28/03/2011, a las 16:23, Miguel de Icaza escribió:

>> 
>> Why there has never been a MonoSymbian is something I don't understand, considering it to be the oldest platform of all the mobile ones :^)
> 
> We never saw much interest in the platform.
> 
> Red Five Labs built a runtime to target Symbian, but they went out of
> business a few years ago.    I guess there was no demand back then?
> 
> Miguel

Before Apple introduced the "app store" model, there has never been much interest in any platform.

I've seen Windows Mobile from 2.0 and finding apps was really difficult, even when the .NET platform was launched the list of apps was really really scarce.
And I've had Symbian devices of all major variants (Series 80, Series 60 and UIQ) and the SDKs where quite complicated, bad documented. Tutorials were simply null and applications, apart from Opera, more scarce than Windows Mobile.
Palm at least, offered an indexing of the apps, so the developer could submit and their webpage and app description will appear in Palm's webpage.

Having to make your own advertising for such scarce platforms (remember that PDAs and Smartphones before the iPhone were scarce and "for rich") is surely a dead-end for any non-big company.

However with the current smartphone market (everyone does have, wants to, needs, buys, sells, cries or dies for) the Symbian market is orders of magnitude bigger than when Red Five Labs started (I saw their product for Series 80, that's almost a decade ago).

Of course, current Symbian future is in debate.

The system itself does have features and a maturity that Windows Phone 7 lacks. Maybe Nokia maintains Symbian alive enough time to see it is better to stay there than to kill it.
Maybe not.

From a commercial point of view, MonoDroid, MonoBerry and MonoTouch are the only ones, having an eye on MonoWebOS, just in case, and MonoSymbian is a lose on money.
From a bored-and-full-of-free-time, or GSoC, or in the future, MonoSymbian may be not such a bad idea (and not having to make for dozens of "Series X0" and "UIQs" easies thing compared to what Red Five had to do).

I don't say this is the current time for MonoSymbian, but I do sincerely hope, and pray for, that Symbian does not end in a graveyard next to PalmOS.
Both are/were marvelous systems, with things ahead of their times, and even ahead of current systems in some ways.

Let us pray that Symbian revives to make MonoSymbian commercially viable.

In the meantime I will cry alongside my Nokia 9210 Communicator for the future of their grandsons.

Regards,
Natalia Portillo