Why Android for enterprise applications?
- by mcabral
Recently one of our clients is considering the posibility of picking up an old WinMobile 5.0 project.
Several features are to be added to the point it will be a major version update.
The client is worried about the mobile market, and thinks there's a chance all the effort put in this development will have to be thrown away in a couple of year due to the dinamics of the mobile market and the deprecation of mobile devices.
So, the client is not sure whether he should continue with Windows Mobile (changing from WM 5.0 to 6.X) or starting from scratch with another technology.
From our part we have been studing the mobile market, looking for clues for which will be the winning horse.
The safe move seems to continue with WM just because re writing an entire application from scratch involves more risks and delays.
On the other hand WM seems to be losing market and the ghost of an exit on their part is growing stronger everyday.
But what can be say about Android? Everyone is talking about it and is growing at full speed but what avantagies will it bring to the table? Why should we start a fresh applicaction on this technology?
So the question remains the same.. is Andriod mature enough for an enterprise application? Will you recomend it to one of your clients? Will you port/rewrite a WM application to Andriod? What's the trade-off?
EDIT: Addressing commentaries.
The app is entirely built with C# and Compact Framework.
The app is for logistics/management.