This is part five of five parts of my interview with Ellen Craw of Ilium Software. Click to read: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four.

As we come to the end of the interview with Ellen Craw of Ilium Software, I want to thank her for taking the time to reply to the questions that I sent to her. My hope is that our readers have learned from the insight that Ellen provides in her responses to my questions.

Steve Ballmer is famous for overstating the obvious that for platforms of any type to grow its all about developers. The increase in the popularity and number of mobile platforms has created a big opportunity to make money selling programs. The big question is, can enough money be made selling programs for only one platform, and if it has to be more than one, how many should a company support? Answers to these questions, and more, will likely determine whether there will continue to be six major mobile phone platforms, or whether any of them will disappear in the future.

Overall, as a developer for the mobile market, do you think the number of different mobile platforms that currently exist is sustainable? Could any of them go away? One would think it is too expensive to develop and support applications for all of these platforms.

I think that many developers - at least the ones our size and smaller - will have to choose platforms. We won't be able to support them all. There are enough mobile app developers to provide apps for all the hardware platforms, though different apps will be available on different platforms, but developers are always going to choose the platforms that are the most popular, and that offer the most potential return. Apps have now become a critical factor in any mobile platform's success (and that's so different from even 3 years ago) - hardware and OS OEMs MUST make their platforms attractive to developers, and actively market to developers, in order to be successful.

Can you share with us which platform that you support provides the most sales?

We generally don't talk about sales figures, but there are a few things I can say. Windows Mobile remains a strong platform for us and we're very happy to see that. We've also been very happy with our BlackBerry sales. The Palm OS market, however, has really dropped off. iPhone remains a great platform and we're looking forward to the iPad expanding the possibilities there.

Finally, as we look ahead, what do you see the the future for Ilium Software? Will you decrease the number of platforms that you support? Continue on the same path?

Given our size, and our commitment to delivering very high-quality apps and providing in-house, live support for them, I don't believe we can keep adding new platforms until the platforms themselves have proven to be successful for information apps. We will be dropping our support for Palm OS (as the company Palm essentially has), and continuing to develop only some of our titles for new platforms initially. We're also excited about some new product ideas we've been working on and look forward to sharing those with you in the near future.

Earlier this week I wrote about Android Tapp, which provides a desktop web front-end to the Android Market that makes it easier to find and install new applications on Android phones. Android Tapp provides QR codes in their listings that you can simply snap a picture of with your phone to access the application in the Android Market and install it.

Today I discovered another desktop front-end to the Android Market called AppBrain that takes a different approach by providing an Android app that works with the AppBrain web site. First, go to the web site and set up an account. The web site is built using Google's App engine, so you will use your Google login credentials, but you do have to set up an account so AppBrain can track your information. During the sign-up process you will see a QR code to install the Android Application.

When you first start the AppBrain Android app, you will tell it to sign-in and it then synchronizes the current app list on the phone to their web server, which provides a nice way for you to see what apps are on your phone from a desktop computer. You can then share the list of apps on your Phone via a link, such as mine here, or via a number of social networks, and you can designate whether your app list can be public or private. The app list page provides a nice summary of the apps on your phone. I guess I am a typical Android owner, with 93% of my apps being free. I've actually bought more apps than is shown on the list, but since I moved to the Nexus One from the myTouch 3G I have not yet installed all the apps I purchased.

Installation of applications is a two step process. Browse the catalog and click the name of the app you want to install. The app detail page provides some very good information including a list of the changes that have been made to the app, and download stats. You will see comments from users and a list of related applications. To install the app, click the Install button at the top of the page. The second step is to start AppBrain on your phone and tap Resync With Server and the application you selected will appear at the top of the list. To install tap Perform All Changes. The Android Market will load with the application you selected listed, where you can perform the normal installation process.

It is worth noting that AppBrain and Android Tapp provide front ends to the Android Market and because you actually install apps from the Market, app purchases follow the normal process. I am very impressed with AppBrain, and I personally feel that Google should just buy these guys and turn AppBrain into the official Android Market on the web. The functions of the AppBrain Android application should be easily incorporated in to the Android Market. Frankly, this is the type of functionality that Google should be providing to make it easier to discover apps and to market Android.

If you aren't turned off by all of the negative news about Windows Phone 7 Series that came out this week, and you are eager to learn all you can about this new mobile phone software from Microsoft, you will find several videos and screenshots done by PocketNow using the emulator that is part of the developer tools.

In PocketNow's video of the e-mail program, I notice that the account options include Facebook and Yahoo. Facebook doesn't have the greatest e-mail function, so I find it interesting that it is included, no doubt that is a sign of how integrated Facebook may be with Windows Phone 7. The emulator shows a pretty small screen for the emulated Windows Phone 7 device, and I notice that with the keyboard expanded while composing a message the keyboard takes up most of the screen, not leaving much room for seeing the message as you write.

I haven't been able to find a listing of all of PocketNow's videos on Windows Phone 7, so here is a list with links:

- Tiles and Hubs (Or, the Start Screen)

- E-mail, Text Messaging, and Calendar

- Pictures, Zune and Xbox

- Device and Application Settings

- Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

Developers eager to have their apps in the iPad App Store when the iPad launches need to get their work completed and submitted to Apple by 5 PM, Saturday, March 27. Of course, none of the developers actually have an iPad, so they will have to test their work using the simulator in the iPhone SDK 3.2, beta 5. It's bad enough the apps won't be tested on actual hardware, but they will be tested on a beta simulator to boot. Users shouldn't be surprised if the first apps they install have bugs. Hopefully the update process for apps will be very quick. As stated in this post on The Official Apple Weblog, Apple probably does not have much of a choice with such a short period of time between now and the launch. I had the impression that iPhone apps would run on the iPad, so if that is the case, won't there be plenty of apps in the store at launch?

I use a lot of Google products including a pair of Android based phones. But, two recent products have left me puzzled: Wave and Buzz. Wave is, well, I can't figure out what it is or how to use it in any practical way. Google Wave seems dead from my point of view. No one in my list of Wave contacts has used it since November 2009. Buzz is sort of like Twitter buy tied to Gmail and was initially extremely invasive in its loose use of Gmail contacts and privacy. I haven't found a use for Buzz either. But, I do find it more interesting than Wave since Buzz seems to have a passing resemblance to Twitter.

Google announced a new Buzz tool for Android yesterday:

Introducing Google Buzz widget for Android

So, I installed it on my Droid and tried it out. An Android Widget is usually a single purpose applet that is placed on an Android home screen. The Buzz widget lets you post something from an Android device to Buzz. I used it to post both a simple text message as well as a photo accompanied by text. Here's the funny thing though: It is essentially a one-way process. The widget posts a message to Buzz but does not display it. There is an option to launch a browser to see the post. However, the post did not appear on my Droid's screen even after refreshing it. I used a desktop computer to verify that both messages had, in fact, appeared on Buzz. But, for the most part, the Buzz Widget is a write-only process. In other words, it is not very interesting.

Check out this ZDNet item:

Roewe 350 touted as the world's first Android-powered automobile

Don't worry, I'm not trying to turn this blog into a car review blog. But, automobiles are mobile. And, this Roewe car model (Roewe is a China based car company) even uses the Android OS. So, I just had to mention it here. And, get this, it is using Android OS 2.1. The only production device I can think of using this is the Nexus One. So, if the Roewe 350 car gets out on to the road next month before Motorola and Verizon releases the delayed Droid update for OS 2.1, the car will be the second Android OS 2.1 device out there beating the Droid.

The Palm Pre generated a lot of excitement as a possible iPhone-killer when it was announced in early 2009. Its start out of the gate in mid-2009 was OK but not spectactular. And, now we read that:

Palm Sold Only 408,000 Smartphones Last Quarter (Silicon Alley Insider)

So, how does this compare to the iPhone or even Android phones? Do you remember Google CEO Eric Schmidt's comment that the iPhone sells about 90,000 units per day while about 60,000 Android phones (all models) are sold each day? If we assume that a quarter is about 90 days,

408,000 / 90 = 4533 Palm smartphones per day

Ouch!

When T-Mobile rolled out their late-to-the-game 3G service in my area last year (they were last by years), it was a tiny corridor that seemed to stretch just a few miles. However, I've watched slowly expand in all directions since then over the months. And, they now seem to cover an area at least as large as Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T (and it reaches at least one place AT&T still don't have service).

Now, TechFlash is reporting on speculation that T-Mobile USA may team up with Clear to provide 4G wireless data service to its customers.

Report: T-Mobile USA ponders joint venture with Clearwire

Clear's WiMAX is already used for 4G service resold by Sprint and Time Warner as well as Clear's own self-branded service. So, it doesn't seem much of a stretch to have T-Mobile resell the service too.

I tend to look at all mobile market statistics skeptically. And, multiyear projections are usually the cause of a bit of eye-rolling for me. But, the gigantic numbers in the eMarketer Blog are too much fun to look at and plausible enough to get a mention from me here:

Looking Beyond the Staggering Mobile Stats in the BRIC Countries

Here's a couple of interesting arithmetic results using the numbers provided in this article.

The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries had a combined total of 1.6 billion (yep with a "b") mobile subscribers in 2009. eMarketer's projects these countries' subscriber based will grow nearly 60% to 2.58 billion by 2014. China alone is expected to have 1.311 mobile phone subscribers by 2014.

Here's something puzzling though. China's current population is estimated to be 1.31 billion with an annual growth of 0.604% (less than 1%). If their population growth remains linear, China's estimated 2014 population will be around 1.35 billion people. So, if eMarketer's prediction is correct, nearly every human being in China will have a cell phone by 2014.

Do you remember how disappointed and surprised many people were by Apple's inability to provide copy and paste for the iPhone for its first two years? Microsoft, on the other hand, has provided copy and paste features since Windows CE appeard in 1996. So, it was even more surprising when we recently learned that the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7S) will not have copy and paste. What is the deal with that? In his iStartedSomething blog, Long Zheng reports that:

Windows Phone 7 Series will have copy & paste, eventually

In it, he wrote: As it turns out, the development team actually knows exactly how they will be implementing copy & paste in WP7S but did not believe it could be implemented without affecting the release schedule they’ve committed to and therefore will be including it in an update down the road.

But, this tells us something else that is interesting, doesn't it? It tells us that WP7S itself is being rushed out the door incomplete. If the iPhone, Android phones, and BlackBerry-s weren't trouncing Windows Mobile 6.x in the market, Microsoft probably would not have delivered WP7S until 2011 (if that soon).

Do you remember my note from yesterday?

Verizon Rolling Out Droid Android OS 2.1 Update Over the Next Week

I didn't see any OTA (over the air) update notice for my Droid on Thursday. However, I initially attributed it to my not being included in the initial 10,000 updated units. However, it looks like there may be another reason according to the Boy Genius Report:

Motorola DROID update delayed?

A last minute bug has apparently delayed the rollout. That's fine with me. I'd rather wait for a stable update.

I took Sprint's 3G/4G mobile hotspot, the OverDrive, out for a few hours for a test drive this week. If it weren't so tiny, the hard edged shiny black device which somewhat resembles the Motorola Droid might be slightly menacing looking. As it is, its pocketable size and a promise of easy WiFi access to 3G and, if in the right place, Clear-powered 4G goodness, made it an attractive device to play with instead of actually pursing other productive tasks.

You've probably read reasonably comprehensive reviews of the OverDrive or its 3G-only relative, the MiFi, elsewhere. So, I'll limit my comments to a few basics and 4G wireless data service.

The OverDrive is a small battery operated device that takes either Sprint's own 3G wireless data signal or Clear (formerly ClearWire) 4G wireless data and rebroadcasts it as a WiFi signal that up to 5 devices in the area can share. A built-in web server lets you easily manage its features using any web browser. It looks like any other WiFi access point to notebooks, netbooks, smartphones and any other WiFi device you might want to use with it. I tested it using a netbook and a variety of smartphones.

Sprint's 3G signal was easy to pick up as expected and worked as expected: Well. The promised 4G wireless data provided by Clear provided some puzzling moments, however. With the OverDrive simply sitting still on a flat surface, the 4G signal strength fluctuated from a weak signal to no signal to strong and back down to no signal again in a period as short as a minute or two. Walking around indoors and outdoors with the OverDrive provided similar results at various times.

During one period when the 4G service seemed stable for a few minutes I used DSL Reports' mobile speed test page to learn more about the 4G's downstream speed. However, I saw odd results indicating that the downstream speed was only around 120Kbps or so instead of the expected 1Mbps or more. However, web pages rendered much faster than would be indicated by the slow 120Kbps or measured downstream speed.

Anedotal comments by regular Clear 4G service users indicate that my experience of waxing and waning signal is not usual. However, I'm hesitant to draw any firm conclusions based on my brief testing period.

You can find more information about the OverDrive here:

www.Sprint.com/Overdrive