The market for wireless games, applications and content is booming and is contributing to major new revenue stream for the carriers. Mobile games are becoming increasingly popular and new applications are being announced for mobile applications quite regularly. Porting applications and games from one mobile device to another has become a critical issue for any mobile software company.

In the past, many game studios and developers considered porting skills – whether it be from console to PC or across consoles – to be a key part of the value add they would bring as either a developer or publisher.  

Some critical components for Mobile Application Porting can be understood as following; 

J2ME devices – A large number of vendors such as Nokia, Motorola, etc make Java enabled handsets. Java was supposed to be the unifying force for mobile applications where you write applications once and then they will run everywhere. Unfortunately, variations in device implementations have made that promise of device portability become just a dream. In summary, unless you run a game or application on the phone, you won’t really know what to expect.

Brew Devices – Most, if not all, CDMA phones are based on Brew operating system from Qualcomm. Brew provided a closed sand box that not only includes operating system but its own development environment. It means that even if you made a game or application run on J2ME devices – you must now do the same development on Brew environment.

Smart Phones: This category includes Windows Mobile Devices, iPhone and ever popular BlackBerry phones. Each phone presents its own challenges when it comes to porting an application from one environment to another.

Whatever approach is taken, it is clear that game developers and publishers have to consider their porting strategies and the critical components of the porting system carefully.