WWDC survey finds 47% of iOS developers support Android, 7% write for Mac
A new survey of attendees at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference found that nearly half of iOS developers attending the conference support Android, while just 7 percent write applications for the Mac.
The details come from Piper Jaffray's WWDC Developer Survey Summary, released Monday. Analyst Gene Munster and his team polled 45 developers at the Apple conference, where naturally they would support Apple platforms.
The survey did find that 22 of those 47 developers also write applications for Android. But all of those 22 developers said they prefer iOS monetization and ease of development over Google's Android platform.
Last year, shipments of devices running the Android mobile operating system surpassed Apple and the iPhone. While Android has seen tremendous growth, iOS users have repeatedly been found to be more likely to purchase paid applications. Android developers have expressed concern over fragmentation on the platform, and even Google has said it is "not happy" with slow application sales.
Android wasn't the only popular platform among those surveyed at WWDC. Among respondents, 36 percent indicated they create applications for BlackBerry, while 13 percent support Windows Phone 7.
A total of 36 percent of respondents develop solely for Apple's iOS. That's up from the 30 percent who said they only supported Apple in a similar survey in 2008.
Among the 45 developers polled, 51 percent said they believe iOS has the highest potential for future growth, while 40 percent said growth would come from Android. But among the 22 developers who also write for Android, two-thirds of those said Android has the highest potential for growth.
On average, developers surveyed by Piper Jaffray have 7 applications in the App Store. And 93 percent of those who write for the iPhone and iPod touch also support the iPad.
But just 7 percent of those polled at WWDC also write applications for the Mac. That's a major change from 4 years ago, when native applications didn't even exist on the iPhone platform, and WWDC was a show represented by 100 percent Mac developers.
Piper Jaffray has maintained its "overweight" rating for AAPL stock with a price target of $554. Munster believes the survey shows Apple's devoted core of developers is an important component for future success.
"We believe our survey shows that Apple's strong developer base is one of its greatest assets in mobile and differentiates iOS from the early days of the Mac, suggesting iOS is better positioned than Mac OS to maintain and grow market share," he said.
The details come from Piper Jaffray's WWDC Developer Survey Summary, released Monday. Analyst Gene Munster and his team polled 45 developers at the Apple conference, where naturally they would support Apple platforms.
The survey did find that 22 of those 47 developers also write applications for Android. But all of those 22 developers said they prefer iOS monetization and ease of development over Google's Android platform.
Last year, shipments of devices running the Android mobile operating system surpassed Apple and the iPhone. While Android has seen tremendous growth, iOS users have repeatedly been found to be more likely to purchase paid applications. Android developers have expressed concern over fragmentation on the platform, and even Google has said it is "not happy" with slow application sales.
Android wasn't the only popular platform among those surveyed at WWDC. Among respondents, 36 percent indicated they create applications for BlackBerry, while 13 percent support Windows Phone 7.
A total of 36 percent of respondents develop solely for Apple's iOS. That's up from the 30 percent who said they only supported Apple in a similar survey in 2008.
Among the 45 developers polled, 51 percent said they believe iOS has the highest potential for future growth, while 40 percent said growth would come from Android. But among the 22 developers who also write for Android, two-thirds of those said Android has the highest potential for growth.
On average, developers surveyed by Piper Jaffray have 7 applications in the App Store. And 93 percent of those who write for the iPhone and iPod touch also support the iPad.
But just 7 percent of those polled at WWDC also write applications for the Mac. That's a major change from 4 years ago, when native applications didn't even exist on the iPhone platform, and WWDC was a show represented by 100 percent Mac developers.
Piper Jaffray has maintained its "overweight" rating for AAPL stock with a price target of $554. Munster believes the survey shows Apple's devoted core of developers is an important component for future success.
"We believe our survey shows that Apple's strong developer base is one of its greatest assets in mobile and differentiates iOS from the early days of the Mac, suggesting iOS is better positioned than Mac OS to maintain and grow market share," he said.
Comments
Would it really be so crazy for Apple to do the same thing? i.e. hide the legacy OSX UI behind some power user option and present a new user with a default user experience that closer mimics an iPad than a current iMac?
It would sure help those iOS developers move across to Mac if they were running similar code and UI/UX.
The geek in me screams "no way"... but the geek part of my mind has consistently been wrong about this kind of stuff.
This means that Piper Jaffray's "survey" of 45 developers is a sample of around 0.074%.
As any qualified researcher will tell you, this sample is simply too small to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions about the entire body of IOS developers. To then go further and translate these small numbers into tables of percentages demonstrates heroic cretinism skills. And to then try to infer conclusions about Android or IOS market changes from this microscopic speck of data... Well that's beyond ridiculous.
This is like me stopping 45 people wearing shoes, asking them some basic questions and then claiming to have some insight into the global shoe market.
The fact that this sort of bogus, primary school spin is being hyped as 'research' by a so-called investment company suggests two things: (1) they are morons; and (2) they may have a hidden agenda...
Idiots!
"We believe our survey shows that Apple's strong developer base is one of its greatest assets in mobile and differentiates iOS from the early days of the Mac, suggesting iOS is better positioned than Mac OS to maintain and grow market share," he said.
I don't really think that their conclusion is justified by their data. For starters the data only really allows us to compare iOS to Android. The fact that iOS developers don't tend to develop for Mac isn't any indictment of the Mac, but a simple statement that mobile developers have a set of specialist skills that transfer better across to other mobile platforms than to desktop.
Second while the data is very suggestive that iOS beats Android as a developer platform, the survey was at an Apple conference. So there's an obviously bias in the sample.
Now if they get similar results at an Android developer conference I'm interested!
Would it really be so crazy for Apple to do the same thing? i.e. hide the legacy OSX UI behind some power user option and present a new user with a default user experience that closer mimics an iPad than a current iMac?
Yes it would be crazy, it would be horrible. Keyboard&mouse is a completely different input paradigm to touchscreen - retrofitting legacy software results in a horrendous experience - why do you think previous windows tablets failed so spectacularly?
Users don't want to pay 500 bucks for the worlds worst laptop, but they will happily spend it for the world's best tablet.
I'm starting to wonder if Microsoft actually has the right idea in tossing out the old Windows UI.
Would it really be so crazy for Apple to do the same thing? i.e. hide the legacy OSX UI behind some power user option and present a new user with a default user experience that closer mimics an iPad than a current iMac?
It would sure help those iOS developers move across to Mac if they were running similar code and UI/UX.
The geek in me screams "no way"... but the geek part of my mind has consistently been wrong about this kind of stuff.
What you are saying doesn't make any sense. Code between the Mac and iOS are very similar already with most of the same APIs. A developer needs to add support for a resizable window and controls that are mouse pointer friendly. It doesn't really make sense for many apps to run on both. You do different things on a computer then on a phone or iPad. Remember, computers are the trucks.
Microsoft is also using the same APIs and UI as Silverlight. So not really a lot different. The Windows UI is too heavy weight, so that will never run a a battery powered device. As it is, it shouldn't even run on a laptop since battery life is really only good enough to move the computer from one power outlet to another.
Way too small of a sample size to mean anything. This number represents less then 1% of the attendees this year and less then 0.5% of attendees in the past year. Most likely these were developers companies also make Android applications. It is very rare to have a developer that writes for both. My impression was that the number is much smaller. I heard a lot of things like: Sometimes we write Android apps but generally iOS only. Most developers say Android owners don't buy anything, so I don't know where the growth potential comes from. Maybe the most growth for free apps.
Android is popular in the user space due to it being free and used by so many vendors. It's the new feature phone OS that also allows app so I'd expect quite a few shops to try to increase their revenue base.
I think those Android numbers help Apple's case. I wouldn't want to see a low Android number also doing development for Android because the more important factors like ease of development and monetization couldn't be polled.
I'm starting to wonder if Microsoft actually has the right idea in tossing out the old Windows UI.
Sure, it's the right idea just as Apple tossed out the Mac UI to create the iPhone and then tossed out the iPhone UI to create the iPad UI. But is that what MS is doing, or are they just putting an additional UI layer using IE's new web code over Win8. How effective will a Chrome-like UI work on a tablet that is Windows underneath? Google started from scratch to make their Chrome OS efficient. Can MS really do that?
Perhaps someone could convince Facebook and Spotify to do the same?
Neal
These are points to consider when attempting to generalize a 'quick and dirty' study such as this one appears to be, to a larger population. The inference that the headlines screams (IOS developers prefer Andriod over Apple) is unspported. The study is what it is (complete with threats to both internal and external validity), nothing more. Perhaps serving as the basis for additional studies which may more accuratley depict developer preferences.
Glad to see so many of them writing for iPad too.
1) How many Android Honeycomb apps are there now? More than 100, I hope.
2) I wonder if the running of 480x320 resolution iPhone/Touch apps on the iPad will disappear now that there are plenty of iPad apps on the market. I think we can deduce Apple allowed them only as a stopgap because they never allowed Retina Display apps to be displayed with the 2x option was invoked.
Perhaps someone could convince Facebook and Spotify to do the same?
They have such a nice iPhone app, too.
I'm starting to wonder if Microsoft actually has the right idea in tossing out the old Windows UI.
Would it really be so crazy for Apple to do the same thing? i.e. hide the legacy OSX UI behind some power user option and present a new user with a default user experience that closer mimics an iPad than a current iMac?
It would sure help those iOS developers move across to Mac if they were running similar code and UI/UX.
The geek in me screams "no way"... but the geek part of my mind has consistently been wrong about this kind of stuff.
good idea, when you need the "power" it can be selected, or in another partition
ios is the future for 98% of consumers
Second, the title of the article implies that Android development far exceeds iOS development. Yes, the title refers to Mac development, not iOS development, but I think many will quickly read that as Android 47% and iOS 7%. Based on the the table, it is iOS at 100% and Android at 47%. I think that is the statistic that should be stated in the title. Some might say that anyone at the conference is a Mac developer, but there may be some there that are just testing the waters.
Another way it could be stated is that roughly 1 out of 2 developers at the conference also develop for Android. However, why Mac OS development -- development for Mac computers, not iOS -- is being compared to Android development is unclear. It's certainly misleading. Why not compare Mac development for the attendees to Windows development or Chrome development? Again, it's misleading.
Based on the survey, my guess is that the survey designers were just interested in the scope of development done by the attendees: iOS iPhone/iPod, iOS iPad, and/or Mac OS. Where are developers for iOS and Mac devoting their time and resources? It's unclear, however, who took the Mac component of that question and compared it with Android. Was it Piper Jaffray or AppleInsider?
This was either a poor understanding of statistics, a lack of logic in interpreting the statistics, or, I suppose, poor editing.
I notice the one column adds up to 243% ??????
If every person at the conference developed for each platform, each answer would be 100%, so the sum would be 700%. However, you don't add these up because they're independent questions. It's essentially saying:
Question 1: Do you develop for iOS? Yes=100%
Question 2: Do you develop for Android? Yes=47%
etc.
If you asked a question where the person had to pick one answer, then they would add up to 100%, for example:
Which mobile platform do you primarily develop for (pick one)?
iOS: 95%
Android: 3%
RIM: 1%
etc.
I notice the one column adds up to 243% ??????
I'm interpreting the percentages as percent of the total population (n=20, n=45) and that there appears to be duplicated reporting of the data (e.g., an individual developes for multiple platforms).
So besides the poor research design, we now have confusing depicting of the data in tabular format.
Something else to consider is: of what relevance to the survey is the reporting of the average number of apps in the app store? First, there are only apple apps in the app store, no andriod or symbian. Second, they're reporting mean data? What's the range, median, mode and SD? Average means very little, and is often misrepresentative especially with regards to non-parametric data. Which is one reason why the median housing price is reported, not the mean.
In essence, collecting this data is irrelevant to the study, reporting the results is meaningless...
Sample size is definately a factor if one intends to make inferences from the data. However, such factors as confidence interval and representtive sampling are also essential when the intent is to determine if the data reduction and analysis yields statistically significant results.