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After Opera and AvantGo now also AppForge ostentatiously is NOT releasing software for Microsoft smartphone September 25, 2003 [MS Smartphone] | By anonymous 1. AppForge makes MobileVB - an add-on for Visual Basic, that allows for usage of user friendly development environment to develop multi-platform applications that run inside of Symbian, Palm OS and in Pocket PC devices. By now if you wanted to run applications developed with MobileVB on some platforms then you needed to pay a fee of 9.99 USD for so called "Booster" - a kind of Mobile VB virtual machine which is a MobileVB runtime needed for applications to run. Now, in a move to foster MobileVB among wireless software developers, AppForge has reduced price of Booster for all supported platforms to zero. In other words Booster is now free and software developers pay only around 900 USD for the MobileVB itself but they donīt have to force users to pay additional 9.99 USD as previously. Notably on the list of platforms supported by MobileVB the Microsoft smartphone is missing! We have met in person some people from USA from AppForge at some trade shows, and we were directly asking them if and when will be a version of MobileVB for Microsoft smartphone (and Booster) available. The answer was... ... that AppForge has no plans yet to release MobileVB/Booster for Microsoft smartphone. When asked for the reason of not-releasing a version for Microsoft smartphone, we got the answer, answer full of antipathy (remember: it were meetings in person, not just through e-mail) that sounded something like "because Microsoft doesnīt support us". So it seems, that although there is a version for Pocket PC (and other non-Microsoft platforms), we will not have a MobileVB/Booster for Microsoft smartphone any time soon! Should we, fans of Microsoft smartphone, worry about it? Well, we shouldnīt! Smartphone 2003 phones and upgrades to existing phones are coming soon (before the end of this year) and they bring the .NET Compact Framework that also (like MobileVB from AppForge) allows, among others, for software development with Visual Basic, but this time it is "Visual Basic .NET" and not the the old outdated version that AppForge is using in the MobileVB product. After long wait, soon, in terms of weeks, not months, a massive wave of Microsoft smartphones arrives at the shores of USA. Motorola MPx200 will be massively marketed in USA soon and release of Samsung i600 (a CDMA phone) is also imminent. Therefore yet before the end of this year no companies will be able to ignore Microsoft smartphone without endangering their revenues. We can therefore expect, that both AvantGo and AppForge will bring versions of their software for Microsoft smartphone soon. (Opera will not do it due to political reasons - if they would release Opera Browser with small screen rendering technology also for Microsoft smartphone, then they would lose multi-million deals with Symbian cell phone vendors; therefore they claim officially that there will be no Opera browser for Microsoft smartphone - never ever) For more information about "Booster is now free" story click here.  Post your comment (free registration is required to post, but if you register you can edit your posts later)
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