Developers Using PhoneGap to Create Cross-Platform Mobile Apps

The skyrocketing success of Apple's App Store and the recent launch for Research In Motion's (RIM) App World for BlackBerry is clear proof that people want third-party apps for their mobile phones. Unfortunately, developers with a brilliant idea for the next blockbuster app typically have to decide which platform to choose before they write their first bit of code -- iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile, etc.

The creators of PhoneGap think it's nonsense that developers have to write the same app in several different programming languages to reach the widest swath of mobile phone customers, so they developed an open source, cross-platorm framework that bridges the gaps among them.

"PhoneGap is an open source development tool for building fast, easy mobile apps with JavaScript. If you’re a web developer who wants to build mobile applications in HTML and JavaScript while still taking advantage of the core features in the iPhone, Android and Blackberry SDKs, PhoneGap is for you," reads the Web site.

To get an idea of the types of mobile phone features PhoneGap supports currently (more are on the way), take a look at this quick reference chart the creators put together:

InfoWorld's Savio Rodrigues is so impressed with PhoneGap he says, "If I worked at RIM, I'd take a trip out to Vancouver to talk to the Nitobi dudes. This framework is exactly what RIM needs to counter the trend of developers targeting the iPhone/iPod as the premier environment for mobile device applications."

I rely heavily on my BlackBerry and many of its supported third-party apps. I envy some of the app choices my colleagues with iPhones have, while some say they envy the ones that are available to me. I would love to see platform-agnostic apps so mobile phone users can all be on the same page when it comes to the easy exchange of information and data across several types of mobile devices.