MWC2010: Mobile companies confront platform proliferation

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The issue of platform proliferation was confronted by the mobile operators at the mobile World Congress in Barcelona but without much success. The divide was highlighted by BBC executive who complained about OS madness”, while a carrier CTO urged operators to accept the fragmented landscape.

Erik Huggers, director of BBC Future Media & Technology felt that twenty-one flavors of iPlayer is complete madness and as a broadcaster, the burden falls on them to reformat and repurpose their programming and content for every new device that happens to come to the market every six months.

However, according to Telstra CTO Hugh Bradlow, there were too many smartphone environments and that unification efforts like OneAPI would only go so far. He also predicted that six to ten mobile platforms would be around three years from now and the operators would have to deal with it and work with whoever wants to come in