Developers peg iOS at 1, Android 2, WP7 3

Following news that Battleheart developer Mika Mobile is dropping support for the Android platform, a new survey of developer interest in mobile platforms shows that this could be a sign of a growing trend facing the Android platform. In explaining its reasons for dropping Android support, Mika Mobile said that the fragmentation of the platform meant that it had been forced to spend countless hours ‘modifying shaders and texture formats to work on different GPUs…’ among other complaints. Appcelerator found that even though the Android platform is expanding, developer interest is waning, a result of the massive array of devices and hardware configurations requiring support.

‘The fragmentation of the platform, which Google seems unable to curtail, is driving this drop in interest,’ said Mike King, an Appcelerator strategist.

According to the survey results, which were conducted in conjunction with IDC, around nine in every ten developers were ‘very interested’ in developing for iPhone and iPad. This compared with eight in ten developers holding an interest in Android smartphones while only two-thirds surveyed were interested in developing for Android tablets.

Of the 2,200 developers surveyed (from North America, Europe and elsewhere) most showed an even dimmer view of programming for RIM’s BlackBerry platform. Less than 16 percent showed an interest in developing for either the BlackBerry OS or the QNX-based PlayBook OS, which was down from 20 percent just three months ago.

On a more positive note for Windows Phone 7, 37 percent of developers were interested in developing for the platform making it the clear third placed OS behind iOS and Android as the platform of choice. [via Reuters]

By Electronista Staff

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software, developer, Android, BlackBerry, iPhone apps, mobile phones, iPad apps, Windows Phone 7, iOS