Mobile Developers See More Promise in Google+ than iCloud
Mobile application developers believe that Google's new social network Google Plus will have more impact on mobile growth and adoption than Apple's iCloud, or even iOS 5's Twitter integration. This is just one of the fascinating …
Context & Ripple Effects
Google+'s momentum was already measurable before this survey: the network's iOS app hit the top of the Apple App Store's free chart in mid-July 2011, and analysts at GigaOM had argued weeks earlier that the service could find a natural home in the workplace. What this ReadWriteMobile report adds is the developer-side read: the people building mobile apps rank Google+ ahead of both Apple's iCloud and the deep Twitter integration baked into iOS 5.
First-order effects
- Apple's iCloud pitch to developers — storage and sync tied to iOS 5 — lands in a market where the surveyed developer base sees Google's social graph, not cloud storage, as the bigger driver of mobile growth and adoption.
- Twitter, despite its privileged position inside iOS 5, is rated by these developers as a weaker adoption catalyst than an unlaunched Google+ platform.
Second-order effects
- Google faces pressure to convert developer enthusiasm into an actual mobile platform — APIs and SDKs — or the sentiment advantage evaporates; the absence of one is precisely what makes the preference notable at this date.
- Apple's response lever is bundling: if iCloud alone underwhelms developers relative to Google+, the value proposition has to come from tighter OS-level integration, the same mechanism that makes the Twitter deal visible in iOS 5.
Third-order effects
- The contest between mobile platforms shifts from hardware and storage features toward whoever owns the social layer developers build against — a structure where platform holders compete to be the identity and sharing fabric of third-party apps.
- If developer preference tracks where apps actually get built, social-platform access becomes a gating factor in iOS-vs-Android choice, pushing both Apple and Google toward opening (or controlling) their social APIs.
The trend: Mobile platform competition in 2011 is migrating from device specs and cloud storage toward social graphs, with developers treating platform-holder social networks as the next battleground for app growth.