Android Developers Flocking to iOS
The app platform popularity pendulum has once again swung back in Apple’s favor, with developers rallying behind the company’s iOS platform more than ever.
The number of new developer project starts for Android fell from a 36 percent share in the first quarter of 2011 to a 28 percent share in the second quarter, according to new data from mobile analysis firm Flurry Analytics. Meanwhile, the number of iPhone/iPod touch project starts rose to claim a 57 percent share, up from 54 percent. At the same time, iPad project starts rose to 15 percent from 10 percent.
In other words, total iOS project starts increased to nab a 72 percent share, up significantly from the 64 percent share they had in the quarter prior. The platform is clearly winning some developer attention away from Android. As Flurry notes, this is the second quarter-over-quarter decline for the OS, which enjoyed steady growth throughout 2010, peaking at a 39 percent share in the fourth quarter.
So what happened?
Two things: The launch of the iPhone on Verizon and the debut of the iPad 2, which gave developers two more good reasons to focus their resources on iOS rather than Android.
“We believe that wholesale consumer acceptance and adoption of tablets, which just a year ago was questionable within the industry, is further luring developers to build for iPad instead of Android,” says Flurry’s Charles Newark-French. “… With developers pinched on both sides of the revenue and cost equation, Google must tack aggressively at this stage of the race to ensure that Apple doesn’t continue to take its developer-support wind.”