I wrote about ‘does everything’ applications in January. At the time I was undecided on the merits of applications that stray from their main usecase. Having thought about it some more, I am coming to the conclusion that ‘less is more’.

Applications that do more tend to sacrifice end user ease of use. The user easily becomes confused how to find what were the core features of the application. More complex applications not only confuse end users but also makes creating and supporting the product much more complicated. As I have previously mentioned, the most successful Java ME applications are actually the simplest. Complexity breeds fragmentation on all platforms to some degree. I have also seen countless applications re-implemented in the name of adding new features. Re-implementations take time and can be risky.

I suppose the problem with simple solutions is that they can usually be easily copied by competitors. However, I still think if you concentrate on doing one thing very well then it also will be difficult to copy.

So, I am thinking that it’s probably best to concentrate on that one thing rather than adding bolt-ons that confuse the picture for investors, developers and users.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 9:13 am and is filed under Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.