CEO Reflections - Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet

As Android devices proliferate, the assumed advantage of building on one OS that is supported by many manufacturers makes it easier for ISV’s like us. Build once, deploy everywhere. Not quite.

Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet have their app stores with their own approval process. This is good since it ensures some quality control on apps, as compared to the wild wild west of the Google app store. However, it increases the burden to submit the application to each of these stores for approval, deal with their idiosyncrasies for app listings, and thereby whittle down the advantage of build once, deploy everywhere.The Egnyte app has been approved for Kindle Fire and is in the approval process for Nook. The mango version of the Egnyte app is currently in QA and should be released within the next 30 days.Last weekend, I bought myself a Kindle Fire and started playing with the device. It was nice to be able to hold the tablet in one palm as compared to the iPad, which requires the palm size of a basketball player or a heavyweight boxer. But from that point onwards, if I wanted to use it for web surfing or any other activity, the slowness and the clunky nature of the device became quite apparent. Still, wanting to really use the device, I bought season 2 of Southland and tried the movie/video watching experience, which despite occasional stammers, was ok. However, I was amazed to see that the Egnyte app had been downloaded 31 times within two days. Clearly the Kindle Fire is being used as a productivity device as well.I am awaiting the app approval for Nook before I can really experience it.I wish we could write every app with HTML5, JQueryMobile etc and do away with building a native app for each platform. But these technologies are not really there yet.