A Survey on Mobile Development

by Abel Avram on May 05, 2011 |

Web Directions conducted a survey among mobile developers enquiring about their browser and platform of choice, what OS they are currently developing for, what OS they plan to target in the future. The conclusion: iOS and Safari are in the lead, Android is catching up quickly, and Windows Phone 7 is still behind.

Web Directions, an Australian web technologies-related conference organizer, has conducted a survey on web technologies during the month of February, and has published the results on mobile development, the rest of the results being promised to come soon after. The audience of the survey consisted mainly of “our online audience of people who are interested in or have attended our conferences for web professionals, read our blogs and twitter feeds related to web technologies, and take our courses in web development technologies”, so the results of the study may not necessarily accurately reflect the reality, but they are good enough considering the size of the sampled audience, 1,500 developers, and their global spread, according to the authors.

Browsers

Asked what browsers they use besides the regular one used for work on a desktop or workstation, the developers responded:

Other Browser	%
Mobile Safari	23
Android	11.79
Opera Mini	2.27
Opera Mobile	1.83
Palm	0.3
Windows Phone 7	0.15
Blackberry	0.15

For testing mobile applications, Safari maintains the lead while Android is catching up. Windows Phone 7 has modest numbers:

Test Browser	%
Safari iPhone	55.12
Safari iPad	37.12
Android (Phone)	21.45
Opera Mobile	7.54
Blackberry	5.93
Opera Mini	5.49
Windows Phone 7	2.86
Android (Tablet)	2.71

The browsers used for development testing show the developers’ interest in the respective platforms.

JavaScript and HTML5

JQuery Mobile is the most used JavaScript framework for mobile development, the others are JQTouch, SenchaTouch, Zepto, and SproutCore:

JavaScript Framework	%
JQuery Mobile	12.45
JQTouch	6.88
SenchaTouch	3.59
Zepto	2.05
SproutCore	0.44

23.94% of the developers reported they are using HTML5 in their applications, a significant increase from 9.13% a year ago. The most widely used HTML5 features are Geo Location and Web Storage (HTML5 is used here as a generic term including other related technologies):

Feature	%
Geolocation	74.3
Web Storage	55.3
Drag and Drop	22.3
Selectors API	19.6
Websockets	19
File API	13.5
Web Workers	11.3
Indexed database	5.8
Web SQL (deprecated)	3.7

Native Applications

Regarding native applications, 17.13% said they have developed such apps, and more intend to do so in the future:

Are you considering developing native applications (using web or other technologies) in 2011?

Answer	%
Possibly	49.3
Not at all	25.5
Probably	18.4
Definitely	9.8

Native apps have been developed mostly for iOS with Android coming second:

OS/Device	%
iPhone	90
iPad	66.3
Android Phones	41.2
Android Tablets	11.5
Blackberry	6.7
Windows Phone 7	5.8
webOS	5.3
Playbook (Blackberry Tablet)	2
WAC	0.4

The same developers showed their interest in developing native apps for other mobile devices in the future:

OS/Device	%
iPhone	72.8
iPad	71.6
Android Phones	60
Android Tablets	47
Windows Phone 7	23.9
Blackberry	16.5
webOS	15.6
Playbook (Blackberry Tablet)	10.7
WAC	0.4

Regarding the type of technologies used to develop native apps, the developers responded:

Technology	%
A mixture of native and web technologies	44.8
Exclusively native technologies (Objective-C, Java)	39
Exclusively web technologies (with phoneGap, or similar)	27.4
Appcelerator or similar cross platform development tool	19.7

PhoneGap and Appcelerator top the list of web technologies used for native mobile applications:

Web Technology	%
phoneGap	47.6
Appcelerator	26.5
Other	15.6
Adobe AIR	7.8
Apparatio	1.2
RhoMobile	1.2

The survey compares data collected in 2011 with that resulting from similar studies done between 2008-2010, showing that iOS has the lead in mobile development and developers’ preference, but Android catches up rapidly. Windows Phone 7 has a disappointing perception amongst developers, but its position is likely to get better in the future.