PORTLAND, Ore.—Those
ruggedized Motorola Solutions' ET-1 tablets you see point-of-sale clerks at Home Depot and elsewhere wielding to display product features, scan barcodes and take credit cards are also being used in the warehouse to manage inventory and by buyers to visualize their entire supply chain. In the front office, however, ruggedized tablets are unnecessary, prompting Motorola Solutions to craft RhoMobile Suite, a software development environment for Windows PCs or MacOS computers that churns out universal HTML5-based apps that run not only one Motorolas ruggedized ET-1, but also on smartphones and tablets.
"With RhoMobile Suite, our dvelopers can write an application once and deploy it an any popular mobile OS and have it look and act the same—what we call future-proofing apps," said Navid Madjidi, senior manager of solutions marketing and software at Motorola Solutions.
RhoMobile Suite will run on any iOS, Android, Windows 8, Windows Phone, Windows Mobile, Windows CE or Blackberry device, according to Motorola Solutions.
Unlike traditional HTML for web pages, the latest HTML5 edition permits free-standing apps to run, utilizing an underlying HTML5 engine that provides cross-platform compatibility as well as access to the unique features offered by each different mobile device. RhoElements handles the cross-platform compatibility, which Motorola Soluitons pledges to keep up to date as new mobile OSs emerge, such as that one rumored to be in development by Samsung for its smartphones and tablets. Two other components of RhoMobile Suite, RhoStudio and RhoConnect, allow apps to be developed and connected to databases., respectively.
"RhoElements, RhoStudio and RhoConnect enable our customers and partners to create a single app that is compatible with multiple platforms right off the bat, instead of having to stagger releases for different platforms," said Mark Kirstein, senior director of product management solutions and frameworks at Motorola Solutions.
RhoSuite allows apps to be simulated in cross-platorm settings then rapidly deploys them across all major mobile operating systems without having to duplicate softare development efforts, according to Kirstein.
Motorola's Enterprise Tablet (ET1) used by businesses like HomeDepot for sales personnel can now run the same HTML5 apps as front-office users on their iPad, Blackberry Playbook or Windows 8 tablet.