How lucrative is business for PPCs

How lucrative is the development of flash content for Pocket PCs. I am planning to invest in a PPC but I am not sure whether the investment will be worth it.

Who are the people who would purchase our applications or is the application development restricted to larger studios. Are people willing to purchase flash based applications/games for PPCs. I am asking this because I am a single developer looking to start out something new.

Also, if an application is developed keeping a target device in mind, will it run the same on the other devices as well? Also which are the most commanly used PPCs along with their device numbers?

I have always developed for the desktop so this is something new for me. So could someone guide in this respect.

Regards,
Mariam D

Its been my observation, from watching various Flash mobile developer communities, that there are two different business models for Flash PocketPC development.

1) Sell direct to consumer. You create an application and sell it directly to the consumer through a major distribution site like handago. This is probably most common, especially for individuals. Entertainment (games & music), mobile learning, utitlies may be successful genres to explore. If you have a good idea, then it might be worth the expense to try because you are likely to atleast break even.

2) contract work for business. You develop a flash interface for a business's customized application, or perhaps do straight ahead Flash content for handhelds. This seems less common than #1 and is more likely that a larger group is involved.

In either case you are probably going to get the best results if you have the PocketPC SAP license. This eliminates some of the problems of delivering Flash apps to PPC. Unfortuately this does make PPC development a bit of an investment for individuals, because you need MXpro 04, a device and the $500.00 SAP license (1 year only).

The phones market should add several more business models such as selling a Flash based service or application to a phone network or manufacturer for distribution with their products (lucrative!), or selling content to subscribers.