Developers Report Increased Interest in Android, Tablets for 2011
The average developer is now building for four different devices, a joint survey from app development firm Appcelerator and analyst firm IDC has revealed. Of those multiple devices, building apps for Android tablets …
Context & Ripple Effects
With no build-up in our corpus, this story stands alone as an early snapshot of where mobile developer attention was pointing at the start of 2011. The joint Appcelerator-IDC survey's confirmed findings are narrow but load-bearing: the average developer is now building for four different devices, and Android tablets specifically are drawing increased interest for 2011.
That four-device figure matters because it frames tablet development not as a side bet but as one slot in a growing per-developer portfolio. A January 2011 reading of rising Android-tablet intent is effectively a leading indicator — builder attention arriving ahead of any large installed base for those devices.
First-order effects
- Developers spreading across four devices each face multiplied porting and testing burdens, making Android tablets an incremental commitment made before meaningful tablet-scale Android audiences exist.
- Appcelerator's cross-platform positioning gets a direct boost: the more devices per developer, the stronger the case for its tools over pure-native builds.
Second-order effects
- Android device makers gain a marketable datapoint — documented developer intent — to use against Apple's first-mover hold on the tablet app conversation.
- Cross-platform tooling vendors move into sharper competition with native SDKs, since fragmentation across four-plus targets is exactly the pain they sell against.
Third-order effects
- If developer-intent surveys keep preceding shipment cycles, app-catalog depth becomes the metric on which secondary tablet platforms live or die against an entrenched incumbent.
- Analyst-developer survey pairs like Appcelerator-IDC harden into standard leading indicators that platforms court and investors watch when sizing mobile bets.
The trend: Developer-attention surveys are becoming the accepted leading indicator for which mobile platforms win investment, with Android's tablet push in 2011 an early test of whether builder intent converts into shipped apps.