Devs as likely to code for Android as iPhone

A new Appcelerator study (PDF) shows that Android has almost completely caught up with the iPhone in developer interest. Those "very interested" in Google's mobile OS shot from 68 percent in January to 81 percent this month and are just a short distance away from the iPhone's 87 percent, which hardly moved in the last three months. The sudden equality likely came from many developers settling on Android as the "second platform" they write for, although researchers noted that the iPhone still had a safe lead.

"While developers are nearly equally interested in both, if push comes to shove, iPhone is still clearly the "go-to" platform for any major mobile campaign," Appcelerator said.

Enthusiasm for the iPad has more noticeably cooled. Interest was as high as 58 percent in the immediate wake of Apple's unveiling but has since dropped to 53 percent. Those who want to program eventually within the next year have also settled down from 90 percent to 80 percent. Appcelerator saw the decline as a cooling down of attention once developers knew that features like multitasking wouldn't make it into the initial release.

Other mobile platforms have seen much less interest but have also seen dramatic surges in interest over the past few months. New BlackBerry developer features helped it more than double interest to 43 percent. For Microsoft, the launch of Windows Phone 7 was critical as it saved its mobile platform from January's near-obscurity at 13 percent to 34 percent in March.

Symbian also saw a slight spike in interest but was still well away from others at just 16 percent, while Palm actually dropped slightly to 14 percent. MeeGo, the collaboration between Intel and Nokia, was tied for the least amount of interest with Amazon's still young Kindle app development program at 12 percent.

By Electronista Staff