Mobile Developer Survey, June 2010

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Appcelerator surveyed 2,733 of its 51,000+ developers from June 15-17, 2010, a nearly three-fold increase in response from our March 2010 developer survey. With more input, this survey goes into more detail on the perceptions for each of the six major OS platforms: Apple (iOS), Google (Android), Palm/HP (webOS), Microsoft (Phone 7), Nokia (Symbian/Meego) and RIM (BlackBerry). Top-level findings include:

Interest in tablet application development has spiked since Apple‟s iPad debut in April.
When stack ranking platform potential, developers give the long-term edge to Google.
While iOS and Android maintained a high level of interest, second tier platforms lost ground.
Large organizations are expressing even more interest in mobile than smaller ones.
Porting applications across platforms is the number one developer pain.
Multitasking tops the list of iPhone 4 features.

Download the full report or explore additional survey findings below.

Mobile OS Platform Tiers

Why this is significant: Apple and Google are now playing chess while everyone else plays catch up. The surge in popularity for developing tablet applications on the two leading OSes, coupled with second tier platforms seeing flat to declining interest, suggests that Google and Apple are moving the battle from phones to a broader, more long-term platform shootout for "anywhere computing."

Differences in Near-term and Long-term advantages

Why this is significant: Developers see Apple dominating in every category related to its devices and app store. Yet Android takes top honors for OS capabilities, openness, and, long-term outlook. Despite all of Apple‟s success, developers see that the winner long-term will be the mobile operating system that has the most capabilities and flexibility in scenarios beyond phones.

Cross-Platform #1 pain point for mobile developers

Why this is significant: When developers were presented with eight lifecycle stages for development, "porting apps to multiple platforms" stood out as the number one developer pain point.