Mobile development survey - target mobile platforms, skills and look & feel

Last week we published a tool for giving developers hints on which mobile platforms might best suite their requirements with respect to platforms, skill and more parameters. Mobile Select-O-Matic does also provide interesting insights on the requirements that developers impose on mobile platforms / frameworks.

The results are not representative for the entire developer community because the Eclipse community is strongly Java biased, but the size of the sample of 891 is pretty large and statistically significant for developers with a Java background.

So here are the results:

n=891

The majority of developers target more that one mobile platform (71,16%). The most popular combination - and this does not come as a surprise is the combination of Android and iOS (38.05% of all responses) followed by Android, iOS and Windows (15.60% of all responses). A group of 9.76% target all four platforms.

As a result a really large group of developers has to either bridge a skill gap and develop the apps multiple times for the platforms or use a multi-platform toolkit.

The technical skills chart clearly shows the bias towards Java in our sample.

A really interesting observation can be made regarding the Look & Feel of the applications

• 42.20% want a pure native look & feel
• 31.09% want a customized native look & feel
• 23.57% favor an identical look & feel for their apps on all mobile platforms

These results hold a few interesting insights for producers of mobile frameworks. First of all, cross-platform mobile development remains relevant. Secondly there is a large group of developers that would like to use their Java skills for mobile development, with only a limited set of solutions available in the space. Thirdly there is a strong trend towards apps with a native look and feel.

If you would like to contribute your data points simply give the Mobile Select-O-Matic a run and we will give you an update in a couple of weeks.