Laurent Seraphin, director software products EMEA with Borland, said the company has no immediate plans to include native Palm OS application development tools in its product set, despite the fact that devices based on the platform numerically dominate the handheld computer market.
Instead, Scotts Valley, California-based Borland is concentrating its mobility interests around Symbian OS, mobile Java (J2ME) and Microsoft Corp’s Pocket PC 2002 standard and phone editions. This latter support is set for introduction in the second quarter as part of Borland’s keenly-anticipated development environment for Microsoft’s .NET platform.
This product, code-named Sidewinder, will feature support for Microsoft’s newly finalized .NET Compact Framework for Pocket PC devices. Symbian and J2ME have formed the keystone of Borland’s mobile device support to date.
This strategy appears to leave Palm out of Borland’s thinking, at least in the near future. Seraphin said the demand for Palm support among its customers has not emerged but that it is ready to offer tools for building Palm OS applications if the need arises. It will also strive to remain device-agnostic.
Saying the world will go this way or that is not what Borland does, said Seraphin. I think we’ll wait for market demand [before adding Palm support]. We’re looking closely at where the market’s going. The way our products have been architected allows for expansion to multiple platforms very quickly.
While not crucial for Palm developers, Borland’s decision not to support the platform natively (support is available for Java on Palm, however), as arguably the most significant independent vendor of high-end development tools for mobile applications, possibly reflects that community’s perception of the mobile platforms it considers most significant.
Source: Computerwire
