Most cost effective way to target multiple mobile platforms [closed]

Question

I have been given the tasks of speccing a mobile application, which will need to run on approx. 1000 devices. These devices already exist, and consist of iPhones, BlackBerrys, Androids, Windows Mobile and Netbooks. The application will have simple reporting capability, and a collection of forms.

Anyway, the obvious solution would be to develop some browser based solution, although given the occasionally connected nature of the devices, there's a potential for data to get lost / not saved.

So instead of creating a complex application for each platform, I was thinking we could build what is effectively a form generator, with basic offline storage capability (text files), designed to run on each device, and have the device generate a form, based on for example an XML file that it could request from a server somewhere, resulting in minimal specialist development costs, and the ability to run most of the logic from the server end, with the devices being dumb clients that render forms and upload the data when there is an available connection.

Anyway, my question summarised is, how have you made the decision on supporting multiple devices for your application. Is this always an unavoidable problem, and you just have to make the call to support 1 or 2, or pay for developers to write code for each platform, or alternatively supply pre-installed devices to the company?

Many thanks

James

Answer 1

Have you considered building a web-based HTML5 application with the ability to store data locally etc. so it can work offline too? This is probably the best way to build portable apps as long as you don't need to take advantage of specific features of the phone's API (e.g. the GPS). This would be an ideal way to do an application like the one you describe.

Answer 2

I have not used this so cannot vouch for it in any way however the RhoMobile project looks worth investigating

You may also want to check out the following SO questions

Technology to write iPhone, BlackBerry and Android phone at the same time?

Is there a multiplatform framework for developing iPhone / Android applications?