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September 28, 2012

New Appcelerator-IDC Survey Finds New Devices Will Drive Mobility by 2015 and Unabated iOS Dominance

Appcelerator and IDC have once again partnered to deliver their now regular quarterly survey of mobile developers, which takes a measure of what developers are seeing in the mobile space from their application end of things.

Their just-released Q3 2012 report provides some very interesting insights.

The survey covers a range of issues, and this quarter developers were asked about such topics as Facebook, new mobile toys, and of course the old standbys – Android and Apple. Though the report did not necessarily uncover anything earthshaking, there were plenty of interesting findings – especially surrounding what kinds of new hardware toys developers believe they will be developing for by the middle of the decade.

Facebook – Flying Low, Flying Slow?

Does anyone remember when MySpace was the real king of the social hill? At one point it seemed unstoppable, and then suddenly it stopped. Facebook had a little something to do with that. But now, as Facebook moves inexorably to one billion subscribers (stop for a moment and ponder that number), is it unstoppable or destined to also be stopped?

Interestingly, most mobile developers do in fact lean toward believing the demise of Facebook is not far off. Demise may actually be the wrong word – we can’t quite figure out how a one-billion subscriber entity might actually see its demise. What we could conceivably see is Facebook’s inability to monetize in a non-trivial way those one billion users, which would ultimately leave the firm a nice place to visit and nothing more.

One way Facebook can monetize its users is to mine its base for marketing data, though that is a non-mobile means of doing so.

The Appcelerator-IDC survey finds that 66 percent of mobile developers believe Facebook is at significant risk of being disrupted by a pure mobile-first social startup. Facebook’s greatest challenge is to find a means to make lots of money from mobile services, and a social-mobile startup with a well-defined revenue plan could jump in and take Facebook market share.  

New Mobile Toys

As the mobile market continues to evolve at breakneck speed heading toward 2015, developers believe there will be a substantial shift in terms of the sorts of devices they will be developing applications for. “Shift” may not quite get at it – it will be more a case of all sorts of new devices augmenting what will become by 2015 the “traditional” mix of smartphones, tablets and other mobile computing devices (such as Ultrabooks). The chart below provides a few of what these devices are likely to be.

This mix of new devices will certainly make things interesting. In some cases there may be new inter-relationships we simply have not thought about yet. For example, Google Glasses could work with either TVs or connected cars in interesting new wireless ways.

It’s Still iOS on Top of the Hill

The Appcelerator-IDC survey takes a look at both general mobile OS platform preferences, as well as specific platform-device preferences (e.g. Android smartphone, Windows 8 tablet). Regardless of the perspective, Apple and iOS continue to rule the roost here. A very significant finding of the survey is that developers are very excited about both Passbook and Apple Maps – both of which are key new features of iOS 6.

Passbook, which 15 percent of developers are most interested in, opens up all sorts of possible mobile commerce opportunities. Developers from all sides – whether pure standalone mobile app developers or enterprises, such as a retail store or an airline – will have plenty of opportunity to tap into it. What we find to be of even greater importance is developer enthusiasm for Apple Maps.

Over 36 percent of respondents stated that Maps is the feature they are most looking forward to seeing, or to using in their mobile applications. Twenty-two percent of respondents are most interested in Siri enhancements. Maps (and Siri integration) is a key issue for Apple as well, and helps to explain why Apple felt it was necessary to ship Apple Maps out the door with the release of the iOS 6 and the iPhone 5.

Getting developers on board to use Apple Maps will be yet another foundational block in the fully integrated iOS ecosystem.

Competitively, this isn’t good news for Google Maps, or for Google’s ability to monetize iOS users. As we’ve noted in other articles, by launching Apple Maps, Apple forces out Google Map users and Google loses a great deal of access. The survey report notes as well “That massive numbers of applications that interface with or utilize Google Maps, such as Yelp and Facebook, will now rapidly migrate to Apple’s new mapping function leaves Google a much smaller audience for Google sponsored ads and Google information.”

From a pure mobile OS perspective, the following chart summarizes the survey findings:

The one thing Apple has not provided that developers want to see is support for Near Field Communications (NFC). NFC is clearly not a priority for Apple at this point in time, but we believe that it is simply a feature Apple has been able to keep out of the mix with absolutely no risk in terms of user disappointment in order to have something to add to the next upgrade of the iPhone.

Other Details

Though we won’t detail them here, the survey also provided ongoing insights into both Research in Motion, Microsoft’s Windows 8, and the role of cloud computing. RIM, no doubt to no one’s surprise, has declined to all-time low ion respondent interest. This may change however once BlackBerry 10 emerges from the labs. It will be very interesting to see how RIM fares several quarters own the road.

Windows 8 – by which we mean the entire Windows 8 ecosystem, which includes Win 8, Win 8 RT and Windows Phone 8 – has already begun to move toward becoming a strong third OS for which to develop mobile apps. Mobile developers are "very interested" in the ecosystem Microsoft is building.

One very interesting finding of the survey was a negative note on HTML5. Although there is substantial interest in developing for HTML5-driven mobile websites, most developers feel that HTML5 is not really ready for prime time. This is a position that we have not found to be the typical case.

Finally, developers continue to show enthusiasm for cloud storage and the notion of Backend as a Service (BaaS), specifically citing BaaS capabilities for applications and data to move across different devices and for secure access to information from anywhere at any time. The potential remains wide open as only 17 percent of developers currently implement any form of mobile BaaS.

For additional details on the survey and to download the full report scope out the Appcelerator website.

Want to learn more about today’s powerful mobile ecosystem? Don't miss the Mobility Tech Conference & Expo, collocated with ITEXPO Austin 2012 taking place Oct. 2-5 2012, in Austin, TX. Stay in touch with everything happening at Mobility Tech Conference & Expo. Follow us on Twitter.




Edited by Braden Becker


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