With one of the more popular BlackBerry apps today, Sensobi often gets questions from folks trying to navigate and understand the BlackBerry OS landscape. Typically, these questions are something like: 1) What is the most popular BlackBerry OS today? 2) What is the minimum OS we should develop for? 3) How popular is the latest and greatest OS 6?

BlackBerry usage of mobile apps is still more concentrated and higher during the workday than iPhone. Localytics also reports that BlackBerry app usage on the weekend is statistically identical to workweek usage. In contrast, iPhone owners use mobile apps more frequently on the weekend with the greatest difference at 2:00 pm EST when weekend usage is 40% higher than the same time Monday through Friday.

Establishing a network connection within a BlackBerry application is a challenge that tends to surprise developers new to the BlackBerry platform. This is especially true for developers coming from another platform and expecting the ability to simply call Connector.open(url) and get back a connection to that url. This article explains why connecting to the internet on a BlackBerry device can be tricky and presents some of the popular ways of doing it along with the source code for our own solution.

Localytics investigates the options for application development on Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Symbian, WebOS and Windows Mobile; and what tools are are necessary to build them.

Deciding which platform to develop on is not only a business decision but also a matter of what technology is right for the project. Each platform provides a different set of tools and development concerns for the application programmer. This is a brief discussion of the major technology differences between the platforms which are relevant to a developer.

As the smartphone wars rage on, mobile application developers regularly face a common dilemma: what platforms should I develop on? After some research and our own analysis we’ve deconstructed the answer into business (Part I) and technology perspectives (Part II).