Industry Fragmentation in Mobile Application Development

Fragmentation is experienced in computing businesses that were related and information technology. When there are platforms or criteria in the industry fragmentation occurs. This forces them to concentrate on the platforms and prevents developers from accessing the scope of the industry. Programmers with an unusual wealth of resources have the ability to cater to the market. Big companies have shown to the effects of fragmentation. The BBC announced plans to establish a news program. In this announcement, they criticized fragmentation inside the mobile software market saying it prevented them from reaching all customers equally and that before a solution is found profitability in the mobile application industry will suffer. Fragmentation from getting into the market for any number of 12 prevents developers. Firstly, prices increases. In a market developers will be forced to comply with an array of standards and procedures to be able to take their program.

This raises the price and time involved in creating an application and acts as a barrier to newer or smaller developers. As it reduces choice on the market, subsequently, this is detrimental to consumers. Developers must incur cost to learn how to develop for a platform. In a market that is fragmented, it is tricky to predict which platforms have a bigger install base and will become dominant. If developers pick a platform that is phased out or becomes a market platform, they will have wasted money and time. Fragmentation In the industry prevents developers of targeted or specialized software from creating a profit and entering the marketplace. Applications are hard to run across or targeted at a niche audience and platforms. It is not likely that applications will be rewarding in the marketplace if the audience is split across a variety of devices.

Fragmentation Market is a relatively new phenomenon. There were very mobile device operating systems, Windows Mobile Palm and Blackberry. Less than a decade later there are over three times those amounts with platforms emerging iPhone, such as Android and variants of Symbian, Palm and Windows platforms. Without a system in one place, it is hard for developers to attain their target markets. Each platform tends to have its distribution channel that is digital. Distribution across channels adds to the costs incurred by developers as pay a proportion of their revenue and they need to abide by the rules of every distribution channel. Fragmentation is and therefore stems from using many mobile systems can only be handled by the owner’s platforms. The best example of this to date is the Software Community, the industry alliance. This alliance is composed of 24 companies such as Samsung, LG Sony Ericsson and Orange. This alliance’s purpose is to create a distribution channel that distributes programs to all devices despite the platform. They aim to make this standard for applications.