Vision Mobile has released its 2013 Developer Economics survey. According to the report, iOS continues to be the most popular mobile development platform, with 48 percent of devs surveyed saying they target iOS first. However, the survey also found that iOS’s mindshare—the number of developers who write code for the platform—dropped 5 percent compared with the previous study. By contrast, Android gained 4 percent in the mindshare index, likely due to its popularity in Asian countries.
The survey also found that 75 percent of developers target multiple platforms—up to three in many cases. “In mobile development, loyalty to one platform is not something that pays off,” the report stated. “Our research shows that the revenues are higher when using more platforms. For example, an iOS developer porting an app on Android is likely to experience some growth in revenue. At the same time, for developers working on four or more platforms, higher revenues are probably the result of extending an already successful app to more platforms.”
