[the_sleuth]

I originally found this survey at WPCentral.com.

http://www.windowscentral.com/latest...holding-steady

It seems just as PB 2.0 launches in February, developers taking a wait and see approach to the new OS upgrade. It appears Windows 8 is sparking interest in Windows phone platform. The bad news is BBOS platform interest is declining.

Devs flirting with�not dating�HTML5 and Windows Phone — Mobile Technology News





Apple widens its lead in survey of app developers | Reuters

[s7khan]

I wonder what Microsoft is doing to attract developers. Something good it seems

[kbz1960]

I wonder what Microsoft is doing to attract developers. Something good it seems

$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[BBThemes]

im willing to bet very few (if any) devs that frequent CB were surveyed. i know i wasnt lol.

[addicted44]

I wonder what Microsoft is doing to attract developers. Something good it seems

1) Huge developer base that knows MS platforms
2) Excellent development tools
3) Lots of developer outreach (e.g. Offering free dev devices for existing developers)
4) Confidence in developers that they will stick with the mobile platform even if it is making losses initially (e.g. Bing and XBox)
5) Guaranteed huge install base for Windows 8

Direct monetary payments are a very small part of it.

[Sith_Apprentice]

You cannot compare RIM to Microsoft in terms of developers. Heck, you cant compare anyone to Microsoft developers, excluding *maybe* Apple devs if they bring iOS to the desktop. Microsoft has hundreds of millions of potential installs for a dev with Windows 8. It trumps EVERYTHING else.

RIM is a small company overall. They have somewhere between 75-85 million customers total. RIM's biggest issue is they are in transition to BB10 from BB Java based OS. The apps will not work on the new devices. So developing now, for BB10 only gets you 1-2 million possible customers. Developing for Java OS gets you 75+ million, but that user base will shrink RAPIDLY come BB10.

[LoganSix]

So, the story is, you have less competition and a better chance of making money with BlackBerry.

Got it.

[ccbs]

Looking at the graph, it seems the strategy for ambitious apps developer is to start developing first on iOS and then after gaining some success there, porting the app to Android. After that, starting another app project while taking some off time to port the app to HTML 5. All other platforms interest can then be fulfilled by the HTML5 apps.
The competition on the iOS/Android are huge and to win there will need concentrated effort. The reward is huge too since usually when an app makes big on iOS and Android, the demand to port to other platform will rise. Due to less competition on other platforms, one can just port it to HTML5 and sell them for side income while starting another successive project to keep momentum on the key strategic platform.

[anon(4018671)]

@ccbs HTML is not a programming language and not too many games are written in java script. But yeah a lot of apps written in HTML5 will be cross platform, it just depends on how compatible the browser it with the HTML5 standard and RIM has been doing very well here.

The PlayBook has proven itself as easy to port C/C++ games to. Question is are developers looking to make big money fast (release on all platforms at same time) or release their apps on other platforms over time and try to extend their revenue. Does the size of the developer matter?

[johnenglish]

We had a guy in yesterday giving a presentation on his compnay and he mention that they were developing an app for iOS and Android. Someone asked "Why not BlackBerry?". The guy gave 2 reasons; (1) BlackBerry has an extremely small market share in the US where their primary market is and (2) BB10 will run Android apps so why spend extra money on developing a seperate BlackBerry app. If something happens with BB10 and it doesn't run Android apps properly or is not well received then it doesn't matter becuase BlackBerry will be finished and developing an app for it won't matter.

[CrackBerryTorch9800]

Developers want to produce apps for phones and tablets that sell so they can make money. People buying phones want lots of apps so its a catch 22 for RIM. They want to sell phones but the biggest selling point in apps and developers want lots of sold materials.

[ADGrant]

You cannot compare RIM to Microsoft in terms of developers. Heck, you cant compare anyone to Microsoft developers, excluding *maybe* Apple devs if they bring iOS to the desktop. Microsoft has hundreds of millions of potential installs for a dev with Windows 8. It trumps EVERYTHING else.

iOS development skills transfer easily to Mac OS-X development. Same IDE, same Object-C development language, same core frameworks, same BSD Unix API's. The major difference is the GUI framework, Cocoa instead of Cocoa Touch. Even there, the design patterns are very similar and many Cocoa Touch classes have Cocoa equivalents.

[addicted44]

iOS development skills transfer easily to Mac OS-X development. Same IDE, same Object-C development language, same core frameworks, same BSD Unix API's. The major difference is the GUI framework, Cocoa instead of Cocoa Touch. Even there, the design patterns are very similar and many Cocoa Touch classes have Cocoa equivalents.

True. Also, you can reuse a significant amount of code.

Apple's frameworks strongly encourage loosely coupled MVC development, so your iPhone/iPad/Mac can share the M part of the code almost completely, and the C part also, if you design it right.

I haven't looked into BB development, but I really hope BB10 code is reusable for the PB. This should almost certainly be the case, and if so, the success of BB10 (assuming it is successful, as I hope) should drive some developer attention to the PB also.