Just found that we are having more mobile platforms than years ago – we used to have Symbian, Windows CE series, Palm, Blackberry, and some Linux (not that significant in terme of market share), however, we got iPhone and Android (Linux) in the past two or three years, and now moblin could become another serious Linux player, though it focus on netbook, but who knows, as Android is trying to get netbook market share, it is reasonable, to me, for moblin hitting handset.
Various Linux are NOT the same in mobilel platform as they were on server platform, as you don’t have to deal with user interface on servers. I haven’t done more comparison with Android and moblin, but first guess is that they are using different UI libraries, I just wish I’m wrong.
And seems J2ME/MIDP is still the only way to do cross platform development, I’m just not sure how much “native features” it can handle, such as GPS, game, etc. If I want to do native development, I have to use C++ for Symbian, VB/VC for Windows CE, Java for Blackberry, Objective-C for iPhone, and pretty sure C/C++ for Android/moblin. Thanks god at this moment Palm is no longer a serious player, though it may change in the coming year or two.
So, I will leave mobile development untouched for a while – I did some Windows CE (Wnidows Mobile) development a while back, and tried playing with Java on Blackberry, I will try Symbian or iPhone based on what I’m going to get next (most likely would be Synbian). I will try anything if I can get a simulator around, as well as the company does not limit my applications (stupid Blackberry, I cannot do anything I want without a application key, so I gave up).