Today Telenav, the company that produces the AT&T Navigator application for the iPhone, has launched in the AppStore a new version of its own application specially made for the CDMA version of the iPhone 4. The version for the iPhone 4 GSM is available in the AppStore, but it does not work on the iPhone 4 CDMA due to some hardware differences that the developer did not know about wanted to specify nothing. I have already written an article in which said that iPhone 4 CDMA has a new type of antenna as well as GPS integrated in the baseband chip, but if we also take into account the difference between CDMA and GSM networks then it could be explained, perhaps, the need to launch a new special application for iPhone 4 CDMA.
The Verizon iPhone required modifications to the Telenav app to make it work with the new hardware in the handset. The company did not elaborate which hardware differences forced the changes, but the primary difference in the two versions of the iPhone lies in the radios (GSM vs. CDMA) and perhaps the GPS chipset. The new Telenav app for the Verizon iPhone will not run on the original iPhone due to those hardware differences.
This required app change leads to the question if other apps that talk directly to the hardware may not work on both versions of the iPhone. App developers may be looking at producing a new version of apps as Telenav was forced to do, to make sure their app can run on the Verizon iPhone. Big Red is expected to sell millions of iPhones so this is a significant piece of the iPhone market developers can't afford to miss.
The iOS platform was extremely successful and the lack of fragmentation was an essential element that attracted so many app developers. Of course, the applications had to be made to work on different versions of iOS, but this is normal, but now that hardware differences have appeared, which require the development of separate applications, there could be a problem between the iPhone terminals. If the developers will have to make different applications that work on different iPhone models, then we could most likely end up in the situation of the Android platform where certain applications only work on certain devices.
Personally, I don't think that something like this will happen with the iOS platform, I don't think that Apple will allow this precisely to avoid ending up in the situation of the Android platform. Apple knows that fragmentation will cause big problems and alienate developers who are already upset by the rules imposed in the AppStore, so we are probably talking now only about an application that must be adapted to the new GPS module.
What do you think?
