This is going to be a short post, just to share something I learned while researching on all mobile platforms. The ones that matter are obviously Apple, Google and Microsoft.

Apple

Apple is using Xcode, and they have the best tools and the best devices out there. The programming language is Objective C. There are some alternative tools out there, such as Titanium, but I wouldn’t spend time into looking more in depth, as Apple can always exclude these guys, as they did with Flash.

You can only use a MAC for developing for the iPhone and the iPad.

Microsoft

They use .Net and Silverlight. You can write the code in C#. You can only use a PC.

Google

For Android, Google is using Eclipse and a plugin. The language is Java. They are the most open, if I may say so. The development can be done on both platforms – MAC and PC.

All the platforms have an SDK which you need to download. It’s free. In order to publish the apps you’ll need to join a Developer Program (not free). If you do some research, you will get plenty of information on each platform, so I’ll leave it here.