As part of our newly-launched “What Do uThink?” series (more on this shortly), we decided to ask our community which mobile OS they considered to be the best. Here are the results:

1. Android – 38%
2. RIM Blackberry – 28%
3. Apple – 16%
4. Symbian – 12%
5. Windows Mobile – 6%

“What do uThink?” is a weekly poll, where we’ll be asking the uTest community their preferences and feedback on various apps, operating systems and other technologies. To encourage voting, we’ll be awarding monthly and quarterly prizes to randomly selected participants. This quarter, for instance, we’re giving away an iPod Touch. The weekly polls open every Tuesday afternoon and voting takes place in the uTest Forums available to registered testers) as well as on our Facebook page. Got it?

Good. Now back to the mobile OS results…

As you can see from the fractured vote count, there’s a strong case to be made for each mobile operating system. Below are some updated excerpts from the Forums thread where this question first appeared.

The case for Android, posted by “pedro gonzalez”:

“As a Google OS, Android knows better than any other OS how to manage Google maps, Gmail, Geolocators, browsers, and a lot of other Google applications. I’m a Gmail user, so the Gmail sync is one of the most valuable things for me.

There are a lot of tools for developers/testers within SDK, in addition the testing part is much better in Android, since the OS is much flexible than others (less limitations allow the programmer-tester to be creative).

Android is not as mature yet as other OS (Blackberry for example was released 10 years ago), although Android is getting better and better each release. For example, Adobe’s Flash player is supported in mobile devices for the first time ever from the last Android release.

There are a lot of cons too regarding the OS maturity (like the total 254Mb limitation), but it seems that the Android guys are working on this.”

The case for Apple, posted by “madhukarjain”:

I also voted for Apple….

Once you use it you will know why Apple can become a part of you’re life, so much that you can’t think of switching to another phone.

From GPS naviation to gaming to stock trading to radio…..you name it and Apple has an App for it and mostly for free, even if not free then most apps are 99 cents which is worth the money for its use.

Many people might disagree and will consider Blackberry or Android as better, but once you use its full capacity then you realize whats the Magic of Apple.

The case for RIM, posted by “jayadinu”:

1.Obviously its performance
2.GSM for its roaming ability
3.Camera and video capability
4.Full QWERTY keyboard
4.Push Email services and many other factors like “A very good deal that I could afford “

Care to weigh in on this debate? The comment box is all yours. Want to vote in the next weekly poll? Visit the uTest Forums or check out our Facebook page.

Case in point: The majority of mobile app developers remain overwhelmingly reliant on internal beta testing.

Here with proof is VisionMobile, who recently published a fascinating report on the growing mobile app ecosystem – a must-read for anyone involved in the space (developers, marketers, users, etc). From a QA point of view, the report further establishes that although testing innovations will ALWAYS trail those of development, the gap need not be so wide.

Here’s an excerpt that sums the whole thing up:

Internal beta testing is the most popular technique used by the vast majority (nearly 70 percent) of respondents, with beta testing with users and peer reviewing the next most popular techniques. Only 20 percent of respondents use focus groups or research of their own. Overall, North American developers are somewhat more sophisticated in their application planning, with 97 percent using beta testing as a standard part of application development and with broader use of a portfolio of planning techniques as well.

Yet, small development firms have limited means today to beta test and peer review their applications with a crosssection of representative users. Given the hundreds of thousands of mobile apps, we believe that efficient (crowd-sourced) testing of apps in a global market of users is considerably under-utilized. This presents an opportunity for the few solution providers in this segment – Mob4Hire and uTest.com, for example – but also for network operators, who can generate a channel for testing applications with end users, and provide an open feedback support system back to developers.

Other notable findings included:

Android as mindshare leader. Android stands out as the platform most popular with mobile developers. Our survey results suggest nearly 60 percent of all mobile developers recently developed on Android, assuming an equal number of respondents with experience across each of eight major platforms. iOS (iPhone) is second in terms of developer mindshare, outranking Symbian and Java ME, which were in pole position in 2008.

Debugging. In terms of debugging, our benchmarking shows that Android has the fastest debugging process, compared with iPhone, Symbian and Java ME. Debugging in Symbian takes up more than twice the time it takes on Android.

Open source. On average, 86 percent of respondents who use open source at work use it within development tools such as Eclipse. Android and iPhone developers are three times more likely to lead open source communities, compared to Symbian, revealing the contrasting pedigree of the developer communities. The single key drawback to open source reported by 60 percent of respondents was the confusion created by open source licenses; we believe education on open source realities can be used as a competitive advantage for developer programs launched by operators and OEMs.

The Industrial Revolution era (2010-2014). The next five years will completely remap the mobile industry landscape. RIM and Apple, two verticalised companies, move into the top five, displacing the incumbents, leaving one Finnish and two Korean companies in pole position. The operating system landscape will consolidate into two tiers; the top-end open to iconic products dominated by Apple and followed by the iPhone clones powered by Android; and the feature-phone market where licensable operating systems (Android and BREW) will finally allow handset OEMs to move away from legacy RTOS platforms. Google’s Android will also power a diverse range of new form factors, from picture frames to car dashboards, offering for the first time a simplified platform from which to achieve convergent interconnected services. In this age of Industrial Revolution, mobile developers will be responsible for most of the innovation on mobile devices, and can act independently from the mobile industry powers-that-be – OEMs or network operators – to get their applications to market. In this age, developers have both power and choice.

We believe that Android’s lead in developer mindshare ahead of Apple’s iOS is down to two factors: first the $99 fee developers have to pay in order to deploy their applications, an entry barrier which reduces the innovation from developing countries. Secondly, the very effective use of open source licensing as a marketing technique to attract developers to Google’s Android.

So forget everything you know (or thought you knew) about the current mobile app landscape. Like the folks at VisionMobile said, it will be totally unrecognizable in five years. Except, of course, for the internal beta testing.

Testers, do you see the beta testing trend reversing any time soon? Will Android soon be the king of all things mobile? Will crowdsourced testing still be under-utilized? Let us know what you think.

Android is a Java based platform and uses a Java Virtual Machine or JVM to execute apps (Android’s JVM is called Dalvik). Historically, Java was considered to be a slow and cumbersome platform.  The joke was write once, run anywhere very, very slowly.

So people are saying that Android is slow, right?  Actually, no.  In fact, Java has been optimized so extensively in the past 10 years that its performance is now incredibly fast.  Dalvik has been optimized even further for mobile devices, so Android is one fast platform. What people are actually saying is that the iPhone is slow.

To understand why, you have to dig deep into the world of Mac OS X esoterica.  Apple software is written using Objective C, which is an object oriented version of C that uses messages instead of references like C++.  (See the Wikipedia article to learn the nitty-gritty.) It’s like having every phone call go through an operator who relays on the message to the other person rather than just calling the other person directly.  Why that’s the case for Apple software is complicated, but one can imagine that the message passing system, called objc_msgSend(), is a critical piece of software for anything written for OS X on the Mac or the iPhone.

Then again, all of this may really be beside the point.  As former Java engineer Duncan Davidson mentions on his blog:

Fifteen years ago, all we thought that Java needed to rule the known universe was a faster VM. If we just had that, Windows and all native UI applications were toast. After lots of hard work by wicked smart people, and more than a few years, Java VM performance was increased to the point where it wasn’t a problem any more. But that didn’t change the equation of where Java did or didn’t succeed. Most notably, the Java GUI applications didn’t suddenly kick native Windows or MacOS applications to the curb. For quite a few of us that worked on the Java platform in the late 1990s—at least the more rabid of us—this came as a bit of a surprise. And a disappointment.

In other words, performance is one factor among many that defines whether or not a platform will succeed.  Today we’re having a debate that the iPhone will suffer because Java is faster than C (that may be the strangest thing I’ve ever written), but in the end the relative performance of Java and OS X is only one small factor in market success.  The hardware and software as a whole must supply a great user experience.

Fortunately, there’s a lot to love and be excited about when it comes to the user experience on both Android phones and the iPhone. With both iPhone OS 4 and Android 2.2 coming out in the next few weeks, we can expect some amazing innovations on mobile phones that make our lives better – performance improvements included.

One thing that you won’t find on this site are ads, subscriptions, hooks or any kind of commercial agenda (don’t tell our investors!).  In fact, we created this site simply because mobile is the next frontier of app development and testing – and the fastest-growing segment of uTest’s business. So we wanted to give something back to mobile app developers, testers and entrepreneurs — and have a little fun at the same time.

We’ll will work with partners, pundits and pioneers (actively seeking co-conspirators) to create original, thought-provoking content about the entire mobile app ecosystem — from app developers to device makers to wireless carriers.  Whether it’s the apps arms race, the constant carrier battles, or the next must-have device, MobileAppTesting.com will be there with equal parts education and entertainment.

This site features user-generated content, contests, product reviews and guest interviews with mobile execs… stuff you can’t find anywhere else, including:

Hard-earned lessons for entrepreneurs, techies and investors who want to create world-class mobile apps

Overcoming obstacles unique to developing and testing apps for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Symbian

Breaking news and product reviews (for apps, devices, networks and more) from top bloggers and journalists on the front lines of the mobile app explosion

Interviews from people who live it, offering their insights from the worlds of mobile app marketing, design, development and testing

Following uTest to mobile industry conferences, networking events, speaking opps and meet-ups

Want to be published on MobileAppTesting?  Have a topic you want us to tackle?  Feel the need to ask what the heck we think we’re doing?  Shoot us a note or drop a comment.

And with the apparent ubiquity of the iPhone, one can only assume that Apple’s mobile market share hovers somewhere between 97% and 109%.  Unless, of course, you look at those pesky “statistics”, which is exactly what the fine folks at Comscore do each month. As  Jason Kincaid (@jasonkincaid) discussed recently, the latest mobile market share stats might surprise you:

• RIM and their family of Blackberry devices continue to hold the pole position.  In fact, their actually gaining ground, picking up 1.3% since Q4 of 2009 to its current position of 42.1% of the market.
• Android continue to gain market share rapidly jumping from 3.8% of the market in Q4 to 9.0% in Q1.  Android still has a lot of ground to make up to catch up with Apple and RIM, but a few more quarters like this and they’d catch (and pass) the leaders.
• Despite the high-profile product launches, Apple’s share of the market was actually flat (down .1%)
• Microsoft and Palm continue to shed market share (down 4.0% and 1.8%, respectively)

For those of you who have switched phones in the past few months, I’m curious to know if these stats are in line with the recent purchasing decisions you and your friends/co-workers are making.  What say you?  What smartphone are you packin’ these days?

I sat in on several of these sessions and heard a number of important topics being discussed that will have major implications for the future of mobile apps and mobile commerce.  These debates included:

• Android vs. iPhone vs. Blackberry vs. Symbian
• Free vs. Paid apps
• OEM app stores vs. Carrier app stores

But perhaps the most interesting, fierce and recurring debate that I heard at CTIA was around the topic of… native apps (eg: separate iPhone, Android and Blackberry apps) vs. a single app for the mobile web. Which approach to “mobile” will win out in the end?  How long will it take for a winner to emerge? What are the pros and cons of each? If you’re not familiar with this all-important topic, check out this report from ReadWriteWeb (pro-mobile web), this post from SmoothPlanet (pretty neutral), and this article from CNET (pro-native app).

We’ll be writing extensively on this subject in the coming weeks, but I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.  Have you already had this debate inside your company?  If so, which path did you choose and why? And I’ll leave you with a great quote that I heard yesterday that all mobile developers should take to heart:

Don’t worry about making the mobile web… focus on making the web mobile.

Ultimately, this is true regardless of whether you choose to pursue a native app strategy or a mobile web strategy.  The real goal is to deliver your content, your features, your functionality to your users, but on their terms.

According to Flurry Analytics, nearly half of the apps being tested on the iPad fall into the games category — a  whopping 44% of Apple test time.

On the other end of the iPad app testing spectrum (only 3% of app testing falls into the ‘books’ category) but highly anticipated, E-reader companies like Amazon and Barnes & Noble are eagerly preparing their iPad apps (see iPad Kindle reader sneak here), gearing up to go head-to-head with Apple’s bookstore.

With the race on to build the first iPad apps, what are the risks of not being able to yet own or hold one? The New York Times reports:

“neither company [Amazon or Barnes & Noble] was given an iPad for testing” and “there are real-world factors that may go undetected with a simulator, like the weight of the device and how people hold it.”

As we all know here around uTest, there’s a world of difference between on-device testing and testing in a simulated environment. And with mobile app testing still maturing as a discipline, what challenges (or opportunities) will iPad, WePad and Slate apps bring to the world of testing?

“That’s fine!” you exclaim, thinking that you’ll just uprez your widgets and artwork from your iPhone app to the new iPad screen size.  Problem solved, right?  Apparently Apple thought so too and tried creating iPad sized versions of their default iPhone apps.  And apparently that idea sucked.  From Daring Fireball:

It’s not that Apple couldn’t just create bigger versions of these apps and have them run on the iPad. It wasn’t a technical problem, it was a design problem. There were, internally to Apple (of course), versions of these apps (or at least some of them) with upscaled iPad-sized graphics, but otherwise the same UI and layout as the iPhone versions. Ends up that just blowing up iPhone apps to fill the iPad screen looks and feels weird, even if you use higher-resolution graphics so that nothing looks pixelated. So they were scrapped by you-know-who.

Think this is just an Apple problem?  No, it’s a mobile device problem!

Desktop and web app developers have it easy.  Most computer screens are large, and any variation in size can usually be glossed over by either the OS or web browser.  Nobody really uses computer screens smaller than 640×480, while many people now have 48″ screens that leave HD in the dust.

Mobile is a totally different ball game.  Apps are modal, meaning your app has to account for all of the screen real estate.  If it’s too big or too small, it will either fail to display or display incorrectly.  Even Engadget recently lamented how they had trouble getting apps to run on the Nexus One:

I recently tried to install one of the few good Android games and found it won’t work on Nexus One as it has a nonstandard screen resolution.

Fortunately, Android developers have it a little easier than iPhone/iPad developers.  The Android platform comes with no guarantees about screen size, so the platform has supported dynamic screen size features since version 1.6.  Android developers should read this article and become very familiar with how to use these techniques.

Apple developers have it a little tougher.  The iPhone and the iPad are fundamentally differently sized devices, and if even mighty Apple’s iPhone apps work poorly at iPad sizes, then it looks more and more like the two are separate platforms entirely.  That may mean iPhone developers need to start over for the iPad.

Mobile developers, what do you think?  Any tips and tricks to share?

There are more than a few skeptics, including Jason Kincaid (@jasonkincaid) over at TechCrunch.  As Kincaid states (with a bit of help from Google’s Andy Rubin):

If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is. Andy Rubin, Google VP of Engineering (and the man in charge of Android) has already shared his skepticism, saying, “There is always a dream that you could write [a program] once and [have it] run anywhere and history has proven that that dream has not been fully realised and I am sceptical that it ever will be“. To put it another way, this is a pipe dream from carriers looking to loosen Apple’s stranglehold over mobile applications and there’s very little chance that it’s going to work.

The reasons Kincaid thinks the WAC won’t work out include:

1. Fragmentation:  Every device maker and carrier rolls out the latest system upgrades at their own pace.  Will they really coordinate their schedules so closely that developers don’t have to tweak their apps to work with each configuration?
2. App Trade-Offs:  Will app makers really trade horsepower for compatibility?  It sounds good in principal, but that’s always a tough pill to swallow for developers who want to create the next killer app.
3. App Store Arms Race:  Beyond PR and marketing bragging rights, does it really matter if your app store of choice has 10,000 apps or 100,000?  In short, no.

This is an interesting concept (who doesn’t love open, unified standards), but there’s an enormous gap between theory and practice.  And that gaping chasm is filled with failed industry standard initiatives that looked great in the press releases that announced them.  What do you think — will WAC work?  If not, why?

His post is written about the iPhone, but it applies equally to Android, Blackberry or Symbian apps.  It also helps to explain why mobile apps have been the fastest growing segment of the uTest biz (phenomenal growth + still evolving market = a lot of testing to do).

Here are a few realizations from his recent trip to his local Apple store that seemed especially relevant for our readers (bullet points are his and the running commentary is mine) :

• Customer expectations are rising fast: Agreed, we’re seeing this in the uTest universe too.  In fact, user expectations seems to be climbing even faster than the pace at which standards are emerging or apps are improving.  Buggy or unreliable mobile apps now draw the same ire that defective web or desktops apps do.
• Mistakes are very visible: Agreed again.  Whether it’s functional problems or GUI issues, there’s nowhere for bugs to hide in a mobile app.  And as Jones says, “Old unaddressed comments are very public statement that the retailer doesn’t care; if you’re not committed to a mobile app, don’t deliver one.“
• People always want more: The notion of having a fairly static mobile app will quickly become an antiquated notion.  Users demand new and better features and a steady stream of new versions will be required to keep up with the competition.
• You have to do better than the web: If an app can’t top the experience of visiting the company’s site via the mobile browser, then don’t bother.

For those who are looking for an overview of mobile testing alternatives, check out our free mobile app testing eBook.  Have any other tips for the growing number of companies who are developing and marketing mobile apps?