Strategy Analytics Developer Survey
Shows 32 percent of Developers Targeting Microsoft's Platform Next Year
Boston, MA - November
20, 2013
– Strategy
Analytics Developer Survey, fielded in September 2013, polled over 1,600
active mobile app developers. Over 32 percent indicated they would support
Windows Phone next year, double the 16 percent which created apps for the
Microsoft platform in 2013. HTML5 and Firefox also fared well.
David MacQueen, Executive Director,
Apps
and Media Research, said “Naturally Android and iOS were the top platforms,
with 84 percent and 68 percent respectively of developers targeting those
platforms. That’s primarily down to the huge installed base; we asked
developers why they were supporting particular platforms and the top answer for
both of these platforms was the user base. 74 percent of Android developers and
65 percent of iOS developers cited this as a reason for their continued
support.
“Of the other platforms, HTML5
ranked third in terms of developer support with 33 percent developing for HTML5
this year, rising to 43 percent expecting to develop next year. However, one
third of those developers use HTML5 as a tool to develop for other platforms.
Therefore, it seems that Windows Phone looks set to become the third ecosystem,
as predicted by Elop in the infamous ‘burning platform’ memo. In contrast,
support for Symbian next year is slightly under 2 percent of our developer
panel.”
Adam Thorwart, Research Associate,
added, “Firefox seems to be gathering quite a bit of developer support, and in
fact showed the biggest rise, with more than triple the number of developers
expecting to support that platform next year. Only 3 percent of developers
created something for the platform this year, but following successful launches
in Latin America, Spain and a handful of other European markets, 10 percent of
developers expect to be creating apps for those handsets in the coming year.
Tizen also seems to have piqued developer interest, albeit to a lesser extent
than Firefox, 2 percent developed apps this year, but 5 percent expect to
support Tizen next year.”