I was recently asked the following interesting question:

“if we wanted to develop an application for an IPad or similar, should we use a Javascript API?”

Mobile development: Flex or Javascript?

My response:

“Mobile devices have both browsers and native applications. For Apple most native apps are written in Objective C. These are the ones you can get from their App store. Here is an ArcGIS reference:

http://events.esri.com/uc/QandA/index.cfm?fuseaction=answer&conferenceId=2F6DC1A1-1422-2418-883C3868A9004888&questionId=3190

I am not currently aware of any open source mapping API’s which are Objective C based. The best option might be to develop your application using the Flex Openscales API and use the Adobe cross-compiler to run it on IOS. On the IPad/IPhone browser, Javascript is the best option, since the plug in for both Flex and Silverlight is not allowed. Again an ArcGIS link:

http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/arcgisserver/archive/2010/08/02/Build-applications-for-iOS-using-the-ArcGIS-API-for-Javascript.aspx

For open source use Openlayers see this link:

http://mobilegeo.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/testing-open-layers-with-iphone-and-android/

On non Apple mobile devices. One can view these similar to the Web. So no restrictions. For Flex native applications are written in AIR and installed. For the mobile Web browser on non Apple devices the Flash Player plug in can be installed. So Flex and Silverlight are both good options, along with Javascript.

So my long answer to this short question. If you want to build Web based mobile mapping applications which run in a browser on all mobile devices. Then today Javascript is your best option. For native apps use AIR”