CES 2012 is in full swing. Yes, there are too many gadgets, gizmos, and doohickeys to count. There are ultrabooks, ridiculously thin TVs, and tablets galore. But beyond the hardware, there’s an underlying current at the biggest tech event of the year: the platform.

Case in point: just about every keynote speaker used that very term multiple times up on stage. Let’s take it down a notch, though. How are smaller companies embracing platforms?

Cross-Platform Development

On Tuesday, I had a fascinating conversation with Kevin Chartier of Wizdom Music, a company “dedicated to pushing the boundaries of technology to create expressive and exciting tools for making music.” Chartier described how traditional app development has been consistent in creating distinct code for each device. For instance, while you can essentially copy and paste basic text such as descriptions, the inner workings of apps could not be easily transferred from device A to device B. Developers have had to create one app for Apple’s iOS and a distinct app for Android—even if those two apps were supposed to do the same thing.

Click here to read the whole thing on HuffPo.