iPhone OS leads smartphone developer battle

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA: iPhone OS is the clear favorite smartphone platform for developers, according to Ovum’s first mobile application developer survey. While all five major smartphone platforms score well, it is BlackBerry OS and Windows Mobile that currently lead the opposition, rather than Android or Symbian.

Among smartphone platforms, iPhone OS garnered most support, with 81 per cent already developing for the platform or planning to do so.

Overall, Java ME remains the leading mobile development environment, showing there’s still life, if not necessarily big profits - in an old and rather neglected technology.

This result is to be expected – Apple has stolen most of the smartphone plaudits in the past two years and currently boasts 185,000-plus applications in its App Store, through which more than 3 billion applications have been downloaded. The commercial case for developing on iPhone is therefore largely proven, said the report.

BlackBerry and Windows Phone development trumps Android and Symbian

The overall RIM’s BlackBerry OS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS (formerly Windows Mobile) proved more popular than either Google’s Android OS or smartphone pioneer Symbian’s OS, attracting 74 per cent  and 66 per cent of our sample.

According to Tony Cripps, principal analyst, Ovum, these results would be most gratifying for RIM, which appears to have successfully made the transition from enterprise-centric applications and can now be considered mainstream.

“ Overall, they are also good news for Microsoft as it embarks on a new era with Windows Phone OS version 7.0. This support for Microsoft smartphones is, we believe, reflective of the company’s eminence as a tools vendor, if not necessarily the user friendliness of its device platform. Quality of tools repeatedly came out among the chief criteria for developers when selecting which platforms to work with,” he added.

Android’s relative underperformance – albeit only just trailing Blackberry on 64 per cent, may be excused by the relatively small installed based of the platform. This is unsurprising given that it is the most recent of the major smartphone OSs to hit the market.

However, this is far from true for Symbian, which finished in fifth place, albeit still with a reasonably healthy 56 per cent developing for the platform. This result comes despite the Nokia-championed platform commanding the highest shipments and largest installed base of all smartphone platforms.

“ In our view, Symbian’s relative failure reflects the perceived (if not actual) lack of development in the platform of late while Nokia migrates to the fully open source version,” added Cripps.

He further added that a failure of OEMs to offer devices that regularly appeal to the consumer has not helped either, at a time when its competitors are doing just that. Whether Symbian can regain its developer poise will depend on how well Symbian 3 devices are received once they reach the market later in 2010. It does, at least, continue to command a following among developers and keeps Nokia in the game. Less well-supported platforms such as LiMo and Palm’s WebOS are struggling for developer acceptance, as well as consumer acceptance.

Lack of application support is a sure-fire way of putting off consumers. Only 30 per cent of developers said they will support any other platform outside the top five.

“ What is clear, however, is that while smartphone development can now be considered mainstream, the real “bread and butter” of the developer’s trade still lies in the mid market and cross-platform development,” concluded Cripps.