According to the Wireless Development Survey from Evans Data of over 400 wireless
developers worldwide 94% of corporate developers expect the
development of wireless enterprise applications to either increase
(47.6%) or stay the same (46.4%) in the coming year.
Only 6% of
developers expect development efforts to decrease. Two-thirds of commercial developers, expect the average revenue
per user to increase in 2009.
"These results continue to support significant opportunity within
the mobile application development segment for both the corporate
enterprise and commercially focused developer," stated John Andrews,
President and CEO of Evans Data Corp. "Furthermore, mobile developers
are beginning to understand that mobile development is now a
commercially driven endeavor rather than just technological capability
and performance with more than half emphasizing market understanding
and marketing skills as key elements to their success."
When selecting a wireless platform to target, money was the most
important consideration by far, with revenue potential cited by a
quarter of the developers and 21% identifying bigger marketing
opportunities. By contrast, only 15% said platform openness was the
most important consideration.
Other highlights of this biannual survey series, include:
- Forty percent more developers plan to target Windows Mobile
than Apple iPhone, and 46% more plan to target .Net (compact framework)
than Google's Android platform. - SOAP/XML RPC is currently being used by twice as many wireless developers as REST.
- Forty
percent of wireless development projects take 3 to 6 months to
complete, and 60 percent are completed in less than 6 months.