Who Uses PhoneGap/Apache Cordova?

I see questions and comments all the time with the general sentiment “it looks nice, but who really uses PhoneGap/Apache Cordova?”. There is no way to have a finite list of everyone who uses it, but the general answer is “more people than you think”. Here are a few names that you might recognize who are using either PhoneGap or Apache Cordova in their cross-platform mobile solutions and/or tools. (PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova)

The official Wikipedia mobile application is built using PhoneGap.   This is currently available for Android and BlackBerry, and it is my understanding that the PhoneGap codebase will be deployed for iOS soon.  This project is open source, and the full source code is available on github at https://github.com/wikimedia/WikipediaMobile

You can read more about this application on the PhoneGap Showcase.

Facebook uses a forked version of Apache Cordova in their mobile SDK.   You can learn more about Facebook’s mobile SDK at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/mobile/, and check out some of the showcase apps that developers have built on top of the Facebook mobile experience at https://developers.facebook.com/showcase/mobile/.

Salesforce uses a fork of Apache Cordova for their mobile development SDK.  The forked version of their SDK is included within both their iOS and Android SDK repositories on github (inside of the “external” sub directories).

IBM recently acquired Worklight, who provides a platform for developing mobile applications.  IBM/Worklight’s mobile application development platform is built on top of PhoneGap.   IBM is also heavily involved with core Apache Cordova development (see the list of committers).

Microsoft is involved with core Apache Cordova development (specifically for Windows Phone platform).   Not only are staff from Microsoft committers for the core Apache Cordova project, Microsoft has also used PhoneGap on public mobile applications that target multiple platforms.   This includes the XBox-Live integrated gaming application Halo Waypoint, for both iOS and Android.  Check out Halo Waypoint in the video below, it looks awesome:

(The license under “about” inside Halo Waypoint clearly has a reference to PhoneGap).

I think most people already know how deeply involved Adobe is with PhoneGap, but I’ll try to recap quickly…  In late 2011, Adobe acquired Nitobi, the creators of PhoneGap, and contributed PhoneGap to the Apache Software Foundation as the Apache Cordova project.   Adobe has resources dedicated to furthering PhoneGap and is dedicated to the success of the platform.   Not only are we helping develop and mature PhoneGap/Apache Cordova, we also build some of our own applications with it.   (Maybe I’ll be able to talk about those some day.)

Research in Motion (RIM), the company behind the BlackBerry platform not only developed the core PhoneGap/Cordova API for BlackBerry Playbook devices, but also is heavily involved in Cordova-JS development, and has integrated PhoneGap/Cordova support in the Ripple device emulator.  (Note: The BlackBerry smartphone implementation was pre-existing and was implemented by IBM and Nitobi.)

Zynga, one of the largest gaming companies, uses PhoneGap and HTML5 to build awesome games.  For example, the popular Mafia Wars title is built using PhoneGap.

Logitech used PhoneGap to develop the Logitech SqueezeBox Controller application, which uses your home wifi connection to control a Squeezebox internet radio device from your smart phone.   You can read more about this application on the PhoneGap application showcase, or download it now for iOS or Android.

Still not sure if anyone uses PhoneGap? What about these, among many others?

Additional sources: ReadWriteWeb, slideshare

Go check out the PhoneGap app showcase to see even more: http://phonegap.com/apps

Source:http://css.dzone.com/articles/who-uses-phonegapapache