Appcelerator and International Data Corporation released the results of their joint survey today, August 3, 2011. This survey of 2, 012 Appcelerator developers shows that Apple and Google are accelerating their market share in mobile with the new Google+ and iCloud. Developers surveyed believed Apple and Google will offer fierce competition to Amazon and Facebook, which will in turn create more opportunities for all companies in the "mobile ecosystem".
Two-thirds of the developers polled indicated that Google+ will catch up to Facebook because Google+ features such as circles, sparks and hangouts, and their Search, YouTube and Maps assets are more innovative than Facebook's. However, since 83% of the respondents say they use and will continue to use Facebook, Google+ projected lead is still somewhat in the future. Twitter came in second with 73%, followed by Google+ at 72%. Networks such as LinkedIn ranked at 30% and Foursquare came in at 23%.
Developers also said that when considering social capabilities in their apps, repeat usage and fresh content are more important than such features as photo sharing and location checkins. Respondents used social, in order of importance, for notifications, status updates, login/identity, messaging and news before they considered features such as location sharing, photo sharing and friend requests.
The survey also showed that those who are using or planning to use cloud services over the next year believe the top five products will be Amazon, at 51%, iCloud, at 50%, Microsoft Windows Azure at 20% and RedHat OpenShift at 17% market share. Respondents were divided between iOs and Android at 44% each when asked which platform would rise to the top. Just 7% thought Windows Phone, BlackBerry (at 4%) or WebOS (at 2%) had a chance at moving into first place.
Thiry percent of developers believe that Android's current lead in the marketplace will be its key to success in the enterprise. But Apple's "consumeration of the user experience" led 24% to believe that it will carry iOS into the mainstream. With respect to platform priorities, due to a dearth of new product announcement, nothing has changed much. Ninety-one percent of developers ranked iPhone as the platform they are interested in developing apps for. iPad came in second place at 88%. Interested in Android increased from last quarter from 85% to 87%. HTML5 came in at 66%. At the bottom, listed in order of ranking were Windows Phone, BlackBerry phones, BlackBerry Playbook, HP TouchPad, HP Palm Pre, Symbian and MeeGo.
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