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MXit API Launch
Posted by Leonard Ah Kun in Cross Platform
Today was the launch of the new MXit API. They talked a little about where they coming from and where they going. This is the basic info you need to know.
MXit is quite a powerful platform in the “african” market. This they described as regions where cellphone data networks are unstable, data is expensive and the typical phones used are relatively basic compared to our powerful smartphones that are currently hyped about. In its basic form, it provides basic text communication between friends and services. Their main advantage is that it works on a wide variety of low end phones and uses a custom light-weight messaging protocol (a variation of jabber I think) to keep data usage to a minimum. They offer various services/content which you pay for using Moola. Moola is their virtual currency which you can purchase via a premium SMS. What MXit has found, since text based chat is delayed-synchronous, there is a lot of “dead air” time which users have inbetween message exchanges. This time is used to explore MXit as most of the low-end devices are not mult-tasking capable. This is the users time that the API would be useful for.
MXit have chosen the API to be server based. This means, the app is never downloaded to your phone, MXit merely provides an interface to interact with your service/online app. It’s like proprietary web browser within their app. I can see a lot of opportunities that can arise from this API, however it is not the same of that submitting an app to a typical app store. You are required to host and manage your own MXit app making it a little more complicated than throwing something together and wait to see what happens.
Apps also have to be pretty basic, simple static graphics and text are mostly used. Games actually remind me of teletext info you can get on your TV. You have to be quite creative in the type of games you want to make. As a mobile application developer, I didn’t find it all too exciting. Their SDK isn’t even mac friendly. However for all the MXit users out there, it probably is something to look forward to.
Check out the MXit API here.
I’ve looked into the API/SDK a little and I’m rather surprised that they’ve made it so difficult to develop apps for the platform.
Firstly, requiring .NET cuts out a lot of potential developers. Why not use Java? Or Python? or even Ruby?
Secondly, if the apps are basically simplified web apps, why not just specify the markup format, even if it is binary, and allow developers to create their own means of interacting with the service? Perhaps the whole Mxit infrastructure is based on .NET and now they’re tied into proprietary systems? The WCF is flexible in that it allows plain XML and JSON for interaction instead of SOAP, but I wonder if Mxit allow this.
Would love a Mxit engineer to comment and clarify. At the very least, could one use Mono, for example?