Embarcadero Technologies in collaboration with Dimensional Research recently conducted a global survey comprising of over 1300 Windows developers from around the world to measure their interest in the rapidly changing mobile application development. These developers comprised of those who have experience in the development of Windows based applications.
While 65% of developers prefer to see some functionality of existing apps on mobile devices, 58% requested for the development of new apps for mobile devices. Nearly 43% of developers prefer replication of existing apps to mobile devices.
While 54% of respondents prefers basic user interface for complicated apps, 51% of developers requires the functionalities of desktop applications to be implemented on the mobile apps with limited features. Nearly 28% of developers expected high standards for the RTM release of their mobile apps.As many as 95% of developers feel that mobile apps don’t replace windows based desktop applications and they will continue to develop them.
I can't believe this but as per the tabulated survey results, nearly 83% of Windows developers prefer Android platform and only 33% vouched for Windows Phone. Apple iOS was positioned at 67% and placed in the second spot. While 14% of developers preferred blackberry, only 4% voted for other platforms such as Symbian. Nearly 83% of developers preferred Android platform for the development of mobile apps for their users. The results have been divided among those with and without mobile responsibility.
Nearly 57% of developers expressed concerns about the development of mobile apps since they need to learn new skills regularly. A quick scan of the results shows the complications involved with testing of apps developed in multiple platforms.
Moreover, cost factor is one of the big issues faced by start-ups. 45% of developers feel that tools for the development of mobile applications are less when compared to those available for desktop environment. 42% of respondents felt the difficulty to find developers who are proficient in multiple platforms.
Around 85% of developers prefer native apps than a scripted/interpreted language such as HTML5, Java and Python. Only 17% of developers are willing to build mobile apps for 2 or more platforms and 27% prefer to build applications for both Apple and Android platforms.
Nearly 95% of respondents feel the necessity for a tool that would allow them to make use of common source code to build both desktop and native mobile apps using a single development environment.
The survey also recorded the proficiency level of developers whereby over half of windows developers have knowledge of HTML5 and JavaScript. While 44% of respondents faced challenges when using HTML5 and JavaScript to build mobile apps, 38% of developers expressed concerns over the lack of programming features in these languages.
Among the total survey respondents, nearly 24% of developers work for companies with a total staff strength of 10 to 100. Only 9% of developers work with companies with a total capacity of over 5000 developers. As many as 38% of survey respondents were employed in companies with less than 10 people.
While 22% of developers were located in APAC regions, 53% of respondents were from EMEA regions. The rest of the 25% were based in AMER regions. Nearly 63% of people who responded to the survey were either developers or engineers. The remaining 37% worked in the capacity of development managers.