Which mobile development platforms are supported by the USA carriers?

Carriers tightly control mobile devices, wireless network, and applications which get deployed to those devices. This is one of the big differences faced by developers who may be more used to building Internet applications in an unrestricted, open environment. In addition different carriers support different standards thus further complicating the landscape.

The USA market is dominated by three carriers, who jointly own 70% of mobile subscribers as depicted by the diagram below. Consequently we will focus on these three carriers.



All three carriers support SMS and mobile web. All three offer a number of smartphones and PDAs. The biggest difference is in Java and BREW support. Verizon embraced BREW while Cingular and Sprint are in the J2ME camp. Subsequently – beyond SMS and mobile web – there is no single platform targeting the wide variety of devices supported by all carriers.

More information for developers can be found on the carrier websites:

• Cingular devCentral
• Sprint Developers
• Verizon Developers

For overview of the mobile development platforms please refer to the earlier posts:

Mobile Messaging
Mobile Web
Mobile Java
BREW
Symbian
Mobile Linux
Microsoft Windows Mobile Platform
PDA Operating Systems