[See how one can develop and deploy an application on iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian in just 1 week and have it published on top app stores]

This last article regroups some Lessons Learned about ELIPS Studio just one month and a half after TweetMWC was first published on the top stores.

ELIPS Lesson Learned #1: Code once, runs everywhere!

The first lesson I would like to raise is that: YES, IT WORKS!!! The promise of a real cross-platform development with a single code base in Flex to address multiple targets with different OSes, capabilities and screen-size is kept. This was made possible via several ELIPS Studio build-in mechanisms:

1. The Device Capabilities API gives access to platform information and specific capabilities which enables putting in place conditional coding.
2. Resources Management gives developer a way to define different graphical assets per screen-size and yet to use a single code base. This mechanism will become even more powerful with the support of CSS that is planed in a future release.
3. Tools in ELIPS Studio allow simulation and generation of application binaries for the various supported platforms one-click away.

ELIPS Lesson Learned #2: Approved!

One of the prime objective when we first considered developing TweetMWC was to validate the fact that an ELIPS Studio app can be published on the top app stores, some being very demanding in term of quality. That is a total success. Out of Apple App Store, Android Market, Nokia OVI store and Microsoft Windows phone Marketplace, we got 100% approval.
So you can do it with your own app.

Lesson Learned #3: Symbian is not dead!

Looking at the download figures of TweetMWC on the 4 main applications stores, the big surprise is that Symbian is definitely a great ground-play full of opportunities for application developers.

By end of March, the total number of downloads for TweetMWC was exceeding 3000. Out of that, the 2/3 were achieved through the OVI Store on Symbian devices. The iPhone App Store comes in second position with hardly 20%.

This picture may seem odd given the iPhone Apps phenomenon and all the buzz around it. Never-the-less, those figures do reflect almost exactly the actual Smartphone market shares. Taking the 2009 sales figures as published by Gartner, Symbian sales represent around 80 millions units while iPhone sales are around 25 millions.

So think about it when publishing your mobile app, there is an obvious and direct relation between the number of downloads on a platform and its actual customer base. And even if Android and iPhone market shares are growing fast, Symbian is still leading for now...