Appcelerator and IDC surveyed 2,760 Appcelerator Titanium developers from April 11-13 on perceptions surrounding mobile OS priorities, feature priorities, and mobile development plans in 2011. The survey reveals that developer momentum is shifting back toward Apple as fragmentation and tepid interest in current Android tablets chip away at Google’s recent momentum gains.
MacDailyNews Take: Appcelerator is an app excretor which facilitates the building of generic apps to be deployed on multiple platforms in one step; the uniqueness of each OS is discarded in such generic or “ported” apps. BTW: Lowest common denominator apps suck. Hence, the respondents to this survey are predisposed to be multi-platform app excretors, not top flight developers, which, if anything, tends to inflate the numbers for non-iOS numbers. In other words, it’s likely much worse for Android than these numbers indicate.
The Appcelerator-IDC Q2 2011 Mobile Developer Survey Report, taken April 11-13, shows that interest in Android has recently plateaued as concerns around fragmentation and disappointing results from early tablet sales have caused developers to pull back from their previous steadily increasing enthusiasm for Google’s mobile operating system. While this opens the door a crack for new entrants, nearly two-thirds of respondents believe that it is not possible for Microsoft, RIM, HP, and Nokia to reverse momentum relative to Apple and Google. Underscoring the fluidity of the mobile ecosystem and in a peculiar turn of events, recent simultaneous drops in developer interest in Windows Phone ’07 and BlackBerry OSes move Windows Phone ’07 ahead of BlackBerry to claim the third spot in developer interest.
Apple Maintains Leadership While Google, Microsoft, Rim, and Nokia Lose Steam
With over a trillion dollars in market cap at play in today’s mobile platform wars, there’s little room for error in strategy or execution. This past quarter showed that even strong announcements and solid product introductions can still leave contenders to Apple’s app developer mindshare dominance at risk of falling further behind.
Key findings of this survey include:
• Apple iOS interest remains high with 91% of developers saying they are ‘very interested’ in iPhone development and 86% are very interested in developing for the iPad.
• Google witnessed a plateau in its earlier momentum gains. Reported interest in Android phones fell two points to 85% and Android tablets fell three points to 71% after increasing twelve points in Q1. Although technically within standard deviations, these drops stand in contrast to steadily increasing developer interest in Android over the last year and are consistent with an increase in developer frustration with Android. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents said that device fragmentation in Android poses the biggest risk to Android, followed by weak initial traction in tablets (30%) and multiple Android app stores (28%)
• When it comes to fragmentation, Android’s issues are not the number one concern among developers. In fact, fragmentation in mobile today is six layers deep. Android fragmentation only ranks third behind the fragmentation of skills (eg: Objective-C vs. Java), and the fragmentation of OS capabilities (eg: iOS vs. Android vs. Windows Phone ’07). This context sheds light on how fragmentation within the Android operating system compounds an already larger problem, and it will be a critical issue for Google to address and an opportunity for competitors like Microsoft, HP, Nokia and RIM to exploit.
• While 71% of developers are very interested in Android as a tablet OS, only 52% are very interested in one of the leading Android tablet devices today, the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Further down the list, only 44% are very interested in the Motorola Xoom and 31% in the upcoming HTC Flyer. Smaller players (Acer, Archos, etc.) register minimal interest. In short, the promise of an Android tablet is appealing, but the reality of currently, or soon-to-be, shipping devices is disappointing to developers.
• Microsoft edges RIM to become the third horse, but there is not much cause for celebration in Redmond as respondents’ interest in Microsoft and RIM dropped substantially compared to last quarter. Microsoft fell seven points, with only 29% of developers saying they are ‘very interested’ in the Windows Phone ’07, while BlackBerry phones dropped eleven points to 27%. On the upside, and in part as a result of Microsoft’s partnership announcement with Nokia, Windows Phone ’07 interest fell four points less than BlackBerry to make Microsoft the new number three in developer interest behind Apple and Google.
• Despite Android’s apparent plateau and potential slight pullback, the road to becoming number two will be long for either Microsoft or RIM. 62% of respondents say it will be impossible for anyone to catch up to market leaders Apple and Google. Beyond market share concerns, however, Microsoft’s biggest problem with developers may simply be available time as noted by the 46% of respondents who indicated “I have my hands full with iOS and/ or Android.” In addition to landing major distribution partnerships and exploiting Android’s fragmentation and security holes, making app migrations from iOS and Android to Windows Phone ’07 easy and profitable for developers will be critical for Microsoft.
Source: Appcelerator/IDC, April 2011
[Attribution: GigaOM. Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Opportun” and “Viridian” for the heads up.]
Why would anyone want to right on a tablet platform that only sells 100,00+ tablets a year when they have the potential customer base of 15,000,000 with iPad. I’d rather sell (1) .99¢ app to half the iPad users than (1) .99¢ to all the droid tablet users.
Exactly, let the (developer) market decide.
When a company like Apple establishes a new product & thus achieves a dominant position because customers really like the product, as opposed to “that is the only place to get one”, it gets close to a lock in.
Look at it this way. If the tablet is a “blank slate”, then as long as the consumer can put whatever ‘tools’ on the tablet that he wants and needs & they ‘just work’ then what is the difference compared to other tablets.
The bar to succeed against Apple is based on achieving excellence across the entire field of the user experience.
Developers want to go where the users are and will be. They can see a lot of the future from their technical vantage point. My feeling is the charts shown are really good data on what developers see & believe.
I think the “blank slate” perspective is also starting to kick in with respect to the Mac and PCs. With so many open protocols between Windows, Linux and Mac, the old canyons of divide have largely disappeared and consumers (including businesses and schools) are now more apt to look at things like the elegance of the OS, stability, viruses (or lack thereof), etc. rather than base decisions on compatibility.
2011 and 1997 couldn’t be further apart. And now that the market is wide open, we’re seeing Apple surge because of its differentiated tools.
I prefer the “closed” ecosystem of Apple — but it only works in the market because of how open many of the standards have become.
Did I expect any better from a Pro Mac site… they say the reverse on the Android blogs that iOS is losing steam with Jobs and Co… Apple has dumb approval processes and approves bad Apps and rejects good Apps … this is why so many people jailbreak the iPhone! Numbers speak volume!
Whose to believe?
They will always say the reverse on Android blogs, but it still won’t be correct. Two things:
1. This survey favours other platforms quite significantly; the survey sample came from developers who use Appcellerator, which is a tool that allows rapid multi-platform development. These are people who CHOSE to develop for more than just iOS, even if it means sacrificing all of the unique features that iOS has vs. other OSes.
2. It is very, very clear from this chart that the difference in interest between iOS and Android has widened; while both may have dropped, iOS dipped very, very little, while Android dipped a bit more.
The primary point is the first one, though. It can be argued that the picture would be vastly different if we were to survey independent developers who use native SDK tools and develop for the platform(s) directly, rather than using some Flash-like abstraction layer to cobble together crude, simple interactive applets. Previous surveys among such developers indicate significantly wider gap in interest between iOS and Android development, for all the reasons explained above (and below).
Would you ‘expect any better’ from an Android blog?
Actually the ‘dumb approval process’ is one of the great selling points of IOS – it gives some measure of checking against malware, unlike most other systems. It’s by no means perfect but it is still improving all the time.
And there are a million and one reasons to jailbreak an iPhone – the approval process being WAY down the list, enabling software piracy and the use of non approved carriers being near the top.
‘Whose to believe?’ (sic).
See my comment below for why this particular survey shows nothing about the attitudes of the general developer community.
And just to clarify a bit; jailbreaking allows installing unapproved applications from outside of the iTunes/AppStore eco-system, as well as modifying some parts of the system. It has nothing to do with SIM subsidy lock and ability to use unofficial carriers.
Unlocking, on the other hand, allows the use of any carrier’s SIM card with the iPhone.
You can have an unlocked iPhone that has never been jailbroken. You can have a jailbroken phone that is still locked to AT&T (or whoever is your GSM carrier). Or you can have both. Two are independent and unrelated activities.
Yes, “numbers [do] speak volume”.
Show us your numbers proving your points.
Many developers are making money with iOS – the App Store recently passed the $2B mark in money paid to developers. Profits trump most other considerations. Otherwise, why would so many developers have stuck with Microsoft Windows over the years, only to have Microsoft eventually extinguish them?
What you need to remember here is that this is a survey of “2,760 Appcelerator Titanium developers” – which basically makes it totally worthless except to the developers of Appcelerator. Appcelerator is a cross-platform development platform which, while it certainly has its use and its place in the market, is not in any way representative of developers as a whole. Appcelerator developers are by definition interested in ‘lowest common denominator’ applications rather than applications which leverage the best features of each platform.
The numbers for iOS and Android aren’t really that far apart. Apple is probably already exploring ways to arrest Android’s growth in popularity without inviting regulator scrutiny. The patent lawsuits will take forever to resolve themselves, and by then, the infringing platform will be so firmly entrenched in the market, no court will ever allow for severe punishment, regardless of merits (the “Too big to fail” thinking). Apple needs something right now, as Android has, for all intents and purposes, reached the same level of popularity as iOS. Now, obviously, when we say Android, that means the plurality of OS versions, hardware configurations (buttons, keyboards, screen resolutions, etc) and user interface implementations, but from the birds-eye view, everyone lumps them together, and then takes that lump and compares it to the monolithic, unified iOS.
Make no mistake, market share is VERY important. Dominant market share GUARANTEES interest of premier developers and existence of flagship applications on your platform first. Fortunately, Apple has some wiggle room, since in the case of iOS vs. the rest, market share alone is NOT the only factor. The fact that Android apps are often casually pirated, that few Android users care to spend money on apps, coupled with the notorious fragmentation, all this will continue to discourage development for Android first, even if the platform regained market share steam and significantly surpassed iOS in numbers. Still, Apple will have to figure out how to successfully sustain dominance the way it did with the iPod, even if patent lawsuits fail to do it.
Very interesting.
You say ‘everyone lumps them together’. Is this always true?
When the ‘everyone’ is an analyst who has no interest in actually understanding because it adds complexity then, yes. When it is the ‘public’, even if they are barely aware of what ‘Android’ is, then, yes. But if it is a dveloper whose living depends upon being able to sell enough apps to justify the work, isn’t fragmentation (both by machine and version) potentially devastating? The stats in the report suggest this is an extreme worry for developers. If so then the ‘market share’ they see is not the concatenated one.
One more thing; anyone who has had a chance to compare the two platforms and apps on them has come with the same observation: same apps on two platforms usually aren’t the same. There may be a few apps that showcase Android platform in the best possible way, but among the apps that exist for both iOS and Android, the Android versions are almost always limited in features, less stable, visibly less polished UI and altogether, inferior copies of iOS versions. While some of us may know this, for Android makers, this doesn’t matter. Nobody will fight a PR fight by comparing apps feature for feature and proving how Android apps are inferior. Android as a platform approaches more and more the equal footing with iOS with every single half-baked, half-assed port of an iOS app.
Ultimately, developers want to make money. Before you choose to develop for a platform, you need to look at how big an installed base that platform has, which you can adddress. That’s why iOS is the most attractive. It has a large relatively monolithic base, with only a few variants in screen size and chip speeds. When the iPad has sold 20M, you can sell to all of those, why would you want to develop for the Xoom, which probably has less than 1M.
Interestingly, I would have thought the Playbook would have generated more interest, as it will probably sell to stubborn enterprise IT managers. There’s going to be a decent opportunity there.
Im still waiting to see the next version of iOS. While Android team is working on getting its initial feature set to work for the tablets, Apple is about to unleash its essentially version 2 of its tablet OS. While iOS is on version 4 now, the tablet version is still largely revision one wit multitasking enabled.
If you think Apple has sat around the past year and only implemented what they have shown you i.e. airplay support then you are wrong. So while Android is still trying to get there initial feature set to just work properly, Apple has been busy innovating the next great features.
Dont get me wrong, Android has some compelling features that work well on a tablet, notification system is much better than apples, and the widgets are an interesting idea. But watch apple take those to the next level. And NO I do not like the apple notification system, bugging me every time my buddy sends me an IM while im right in the middle of playing GunBros!
One little survey doesn’t make for a scientific conclusion. This survey doesn’t actually reflect the TRUE nature of the marketplace, which shows Android phones seriously outpacing iPhones in sales. This article has the accurate statistics in these regards: http://www.macstories.net/news/android-strides-ahead-in-us-smartphone-market-share/
But are developers making money on all those “Android” phone sales? There’s a lot of evidence so far to suggest that platform fragmentation and user expectations of Google (“they give us free stuff!”) result in developers making significantly less money on the Android side of the fence.
Or, to put it another way, the raw number of Android handsets out there may not matter much more than the raw number of Nokia Symbian phones out there. Just because you crank out a ton of phones doesn’t mean you have a viable or lucrative platform for developers.
If I were a developer, I might consider creating an app or two for the Playbook. After all, anyone who buys a Playbook will clearly be desperate for apps, and your app might stand out in a field of a dozen (or less)!
@MacBill
Interesting link. It seems to be saying that because more people plan to purchase Android, it is the most desired OS.
Using that logic, Toyotas are therefore the most desired cars?
I think it is important to raise awareness regarding Apple’s scams and abuses related to mobile application and digital entertainment markets, their strategy to destroy the web by pushing HTML5 (which they do not truly support and implement themselves) in order to kick users out of the web into Apple’s wallen garden taxed at 30% is outrageous! The ban of Flash is part of it, I invite you to read my email sent to Steve Jobs this week in response to his “Thought on Flash” posted on Apple’s website last year:
http://tinyurl.com/65w3bop