I was specifically referring to proprietary (closed) platforms and to SDKs with the relative level of scope/clarity/consistency we're seeing on iPhone.
Note that people mention iPhone/iPod, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP in the same breath, and on this list clearly the former has the lowest barrier to entry.
For me, somehow Android just doesn't quite fit in this categorization. (Neither does BlackBerry or the Palm SDKs of yore which also have low price tags).
But even if you want to just compare directly "phone to phone", it seems to me there is a cost that exceeds the "free" price tag on these other SDKs.
For example, I happen to be quite familiar with the openembedded toolset used to build eg the OpenMoko phones; and I have little doubt that the value of the additional time that must go into the learning curve to get going, and the effort required to produce something comparable, will easily exceed $1k for many people.
Basically, if I ask the question: to leverage $1k + time1 into $x; vs to leverage $0 + time2 into the same $x, it just always seems the $1k is a really minor barrier to entry here compared to the additional time in dealing with things like device variations.
I am inclined to think Android might change that equation somewhere down the line, but at the moment I'm just not quite seeing that picture.
Note that people mention iPhone/iPod, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP in the same breath, and on this list clearly the former has the lowest barrier to entry.
For me, somehow Android just doesn't quite fit in this categorization. (Neither does BlackBerry or the Palm SDKs of yore which also have low price tags).
But even if you want to just compare directly "phone to phone", it seems to me there is a cost that exceeds the "free" price tag on these other SDKs.
For example, I happen to be quite familiar with the openembedded toolset used to build eg the OpenMoko phones; and I have little doubt that the value of the additional time that must go into the learning curve to get going, and the effort required to produce something comparable, will easily exceed $1k for many people.
Basically, if I ask the question: to leverage $1k + time1 into $x; vs to leverage $0 + time2 into the same $x, it just always seems the $1k is a really minor barrier to entry here compared to the additional time in dealing with things like device variations.
I am inclined to think Android might change that equation somewhere down the line, but at the moment I'm just not quite seeing that picture.