One Month left to Win BIG with Widgets, Three BIG reasons to try...

We talk a lot about widgets in my team, and to be honest everyone has a slightly different view on how widgets will affect the mobile development industry. With only 31 DAYS LEFT until Samsung IQ closes, I want to share what I think the BIG deal is about widgets.

1. Widgets = Rapid development time
All widgets share the same basic technologies - HTML, JavaScript, and cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This makes them great vehicles for leveraging existing web skills to bring web developers to mobile, leveraging the time-to-market advantage of web scripting technologies.
The fact mobile widgets are developed utilizing practically the same skills as those needed to build a conventional website makes Samsung IQ the perfect opportunity for a web-developer looking to diversify into the Mobile space.

2. Widgets = X-platform
With widgets you have a real cross-platform advantage. Although packaging requirements differ slightly between different widget flavours, and access to native service APIs can differ significantly between different widget platforms, the basic principle is the same: create an application, that utilizes a WRT engine without the cumbersome browser chrome.

For entering Samsung IQ, this means you may already have a functioning widget, that with a few minor adjustments to your code and configuration would make a perfect Samsung Mobile Widget, making easily accessible from the Touch Wiz UI widget tray.

3. Widgets = Business opportunity
Looking around at other mobile developer blogs and communities it’s clear our industry is captivated by these little zipped up packages of code, images and script. This is occurring at all levels: device manufacturer, network operator and Mobile OS platform.

Enter Samsung IQ and you could win not only cash, but also the opportunity to distribute your work via Samsung’s More Widgets on-device service. What a terrific way to build your brand. Better yet, our competition is completely non-exclusive so there is nothing to stop you going out and taking advantage of the other promotions and opportunities out there – and they are out there.

Thank you to everybody who has contacted us, seeking further information and advice on how to get started.

Based on you questions and feedback, we have been continually updating our Knowledge Base SIQ Resources Page. If you haven’t visited this page recently, it’s well worth another look as we’ve added some further information and tried to clarify some points that were generating queries. If you have any further questions, do let us know. We’ll be here to assist right until the competition closes on Friday 14 August 2009.