Security and Selling of Smartphone Applications

Two posts over on All About Symbian to start the week off, both with an eye on the smartphone application market.

The first is about the mixed messages that Nokia are putting on as regards application stores. the Sims 3 mobile game from EA is now available in the Ovi Store (for £4) and the N-Gage Store (for £6). Something is seriously out of whack here.

The release of Sims 3 on N-Gage is going to be very interesting for Nokia and Electronic Arts. Why? Because this java-based title is already out there in various formats and locations – which means Electronic Arts (EA) are going to be able to do something that, if they made it public, would make very interesting reading. They can take the sales of the mobile versions of Sims 3, and see what works in terms of sales – and what doesn’t.

The second is on platform security, and the idea of a single malformed program (or deliberate hack) on a smartphone can pull down an entire comms cell – and that;s why jail-broken iPhones should never be allowed (says Apple):

Who’d have thought the iPhone was so powerful compared to all the other millions of phones out there? Actually it’s the other way around – who’d have thought the iPhone was so porous and unconscious to security that this is possible.