Wireless consultancy iGR
's recent
study on
U.S.-based mobile developers shows the top development platforms preferred by develeopers are iPhone, followed by RIM BlackBerry, Andriod and Windows Mobile.
Fifty-three percent of the surveyed developers build applications
for
the Apple iPhone OS. The next most popular platforms were RIM
BlackBerry
OS, Android and Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5. - this is a drastic
shift
from iGR's 2009 developer study in which Windows Mobile was
by
far the most popular OS. Developers generally develop for multiple
platforms and are increasingly developing for more. Respondents
currently developed for 2.4 separate platforms, a number that will
increase to 3.4 over the next 12 months.
Apple's iPhone OS also led in developers planning to develop in
future,
with more than half of those not currently developing for the
platform
planning to in the next 12 months. Google's Android and BlackBerry
OS
were the next most popular platforms that programmers were
planning to
start supporting.
When asked to indicate the five most important factors when
choosing a
mobile platform, more than half of developers consider multi-touch
to be
important or essential to application development, making a whole
wealth
of devices inadequate by this standard.
The survey asked respondents a
series of
questions regarding the platforms for which they currently develop
and
those for which they intend to develop in the next 12 months.
Other
issues researched included which OEMs provided the best support,
the
types of applications they were developing and which devices,
including
tablets, they planned to support.
"With each new feature and capability added to smartphone OSes,
competition in the space continues to heat up," said Matthew
Vartabedian, research vice president of iGR. "Providing a
solid
developer experience and the ability for developers to generate
revenue
and profits off of the platforms is a key aspect of that
competition."
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