For the longest time, when it came to cross-platform mobile middleware, the solution was Ideaworks3d and its Airplay technology. But not anymore. June saw the company and its product get a radical rebrand.

Now known as Marmalade, CTO Tim Closs explains the move was made to position it for future growth.

"We felt we had too many brands; Ideaworks3d, Ideaworks Game Studio, Ideaworks Labs as well as Airplay," he says. "We've even had a couple of people confusing us with Apple's AirPlay wireless streaming technology."

Thick cut?

As for the adoption of a name better known as a bitter orange breakfast preserve, Closs says there's no particular significance. "We came up with a bunch of names and chose that one. After all, there's Apple and BlackBerry."

More important is the launchpad Marmalade provides for the company going forward.

"There's a lot more interest in the industry about what we're doing," Closs says.

"Post-Apple, everyone's developing on Android now, plus we support Symbian, bada and webOS, and in future will support BlackBerry's Tablet OS too."

Looking wide

Of course, there's plenty of competition when it comes to cross-platform engines, ranging from out-of-the-box gaming solutions such as Unity, Unreal Engine and Shiva3D to prosumer tools like GameSalad, plus more general app development frameworks.

"We're the best solution for developers who want to stand out from the crowd," Closs argues.

"Industry standard tools such as Flex and Titanium are great for 80 percent of developers, but limiting for the remaining 20 percent. Other solutions like Unity go vertical in terms of offering everything, whereas Marmalade is horizontal, so developers can gain access to APIs they need."

And with plenty of activity planned for the second part of 2011, as the company looks to build up its development community and aggregation services for OEMs and carriers, as well new components for the SDK, we expect to be hearing a lot more about Marmalade in future.

You can find about more about the Marmalade SDK here.