There are just too many development platforms, according to a poll of industry execs.
Palm, iMode/Doja, N-Gage, Symbian, BREW and even Java all face "serious long-term challenges" if the findings of TMRC's Mobile Games Industry Experts Panel are borne out.
The survey, carried out in January and February among 147 senior execs from 136 mobile games companies, asked respondents to measure the various development platforms against key performance parameters.
Only 15 per cent of respondents felt that Palm was ‘here to stay’, 43 per cent saw Nokia's N-Gage as a ‘fading star’ and 22 per cent said that Java/J2ME was ‘unlikely to be around in five years time’.
Conversely, the likes of iPhone and Android came out of the research in a favourable light.
The TMRC points out, however, that Palm's importance could have been underplayed in the poll as its Pre handset and Web OS were unveiled in the middle of the interview process.
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Vic Whiting, MD at The Multimedia Research Consultancy, said: “We acknowledge that these results represent industry sentiment at a particular point in time and we do not expect rival DPs/OSs to simply lie down and die.
"However, they will all have to raise their games quickly and forcefully if they are to counter the momentum and impact being achieved by the likes of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android."
